Good Free Virus Scanners and Antiviruses?

If you say you want “good and free” as you ask me for advice on a virus scanner or antivirus, don’t get mad at me if I tell you to remove your Avast, Kaspersky or AVG. I have zero faith in either one of those. ZERO. Simply because I have done my tests and the results were what I suspected. Garbage.
Microsoft Security essentials and Microsoft windows defender are the only antiviruses (virus protection) I recommend. Even though virus scanner and antivirus are two different things. One scans, the other monitors with a scan option.
If you want a good virus scanner then you must understand the maker of the program made it to scan and focused on scanning manually only. This is a good thing. Doesn’t bloat down your computer running scans when if it was a good virus protection, there’d be nothing to scan to begin with.
From a previous post here about virus scanners and antiviruses.
RogueKiller.exe  This will hunt down the deepest of virus.
ATF-Cleaner.exe helps clear up what’s on your computer in folders that you got locked out of in the attack. empties trash and cache and a bunch of stuff all at the same time
Spybotweak these days but doesn’t kill you to give it a scan and let it clean a few things up too.
[Microsoft Essentials Windows 7] | [Windows Defender Windows 8]..Not a bad free Virus Scanner. Works pretty good. Works best if installed before you get the virus. Protects better than any other virus scanner. Free or otherwise.
unhide.exe will get your icons back if you lost them and your files back if they disappeared when the virus hit you.
Malwarebytes– free and good strong software
Super Anti-Spyware – Stupid name, great product. oh and it has a free version.
Emergency Kit Scanner – I use this one anytime a friend calls me for help
MVP’s Hosts – block your computer from accessing known virus site. Stops advertisements too. Not a virus scanner or antivirus in teh sense of realtime protection, but still a good addition.

The basic rule of internet safety is watching out for the b.y.c.a.k. virus. b.y.c.a.k. = between your chair and keyboard.
this means, don’t open weird emails. Don’t go to weird websites. Don’t click impulse click bait links on Facebook or twitter or the like.

Remember these and you have a better chance than 75% of the people on the internet.

Still no matter how safe you are, you can still get a virus from legitimate uses of your computer on the internet. If this happens, then be wise and either  wipe and reinstall windows, or take the time to run every  program in the link above (this is so much more fun and feels very accomplished in the end). Don’t forget to update the programs and do it again all week long, just to be sure.

Leap Year Virus 2012 ??

It seems that one of the viruses that I reported in one of my previous posts, that obtained on my computer at work, has been bit by the Leap Year Virus 2012.
Everything is running slow.
First clue was I got a notice about “iteratorutils.jsm:117” failed to start. That of course is not a sign of virus, it is a sign that something is running slow, since script time for Mozilla is 10 seconds, The computer is running so slow, it exceeded the 10 second script load time . Not perfect science but enough to get me alerted. Yesterday was a busy day. My computer was running at full speed, smooth and nice. I never once searched anything on the web. I just worked on my drawings and records. Today, slow. Everything is loading at a crawl.

I am now running scans but it seems Microsoft essentials has locked up. And the only thing I have that will run, is spybot search and destroy, and Rouge Killer (linked below). Rouge Killer did find a couple registry anomalies that were labeled regular stuff you would normally overlook, I deleted the instances anyway. My machine might not boot back up because of that. but it’s worth a shot. I am sure the I.T. guy here and I can get the office computer back up and I will report back here as to do or not do what I did. I am sure I have to reboot because what regestry was showing, is that 3 items were loading on start of the computer. Since my computer is still running, then the items are still running and I only removed what starts them.If I don’t report back before you read this….. Don’t do it!.

Will report back when I find more to see if there is an actual virus that has been dormant waiting for Leap Year 2012. Possibly bundled with Antivirus 2012

If you notice the same issues, Please describe below, and check back often. I will be updating this as the day progresses.

**update** Microsoft essentials finally finished update. Scanning now. but so far nothing is showing up.

***Update. I have no idea what happened, 3 hours into my work day, and my computer just started working normal. Reboots really slow now, but it works again.
No virus scanners found anything. So I have no clue if they just don’t have the virus signature yet, or if it was a fluke bug, or what.

Sorry about the Downtime

My website was compromised through n exploit in Flash Gallery.

Sorry about any downtime, and sorry that you could not access the information you searched for.
I took time off for my birthday so I never saw this happen. I got notice that the site was down, so I had to go back and rebuild.

I hope you have an easy time searching for what you need.

Again, sorry about the down time.

XP Antivirus 2012 – Scam

Well a technician at the office got the virus “XP Antivirus 2012” for me to remove from his hp mini.
steady pop ups. No executable files would run.

To fix your .exe executable files to work again, you need to edit your registry and change one insert to say exefile
open regedit by right clicking the file in your windows folder, select RUN AS, uncheck the box that says “protect my computer and data from….” and then click ok. The regedit.exe will open
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
Scroll down till you find the folder icon labeled “EXE”
look for (Default). Right click it and select “modify”. a text box will pop up and just type: exefile
and then click ok.
Now your executables are restored to functioning again.

reg fix for Xp

Now… Since the virus runs as a spin off of an old virus that has been floating around, the fix is similar for each version of windows it was created for so here is the fix for the windows 7 version of this virus

Just scroll down till you see the virus scanners and all of that and use them all. They are all very important in removing this stupid thing.

RogueKiller.exe
ATF-Cleaner.exe helps clear up what’s on your computer in folders that you got locked out of in the attack.
Spybot
ESET Online Virus Scanner  to clear out the Virus
[Microsoft Essentials Windows 7] | [Windows Defender Windows 8]Not a bad free Virus Scanner. Works pretty good.
unhide.exe will get your icons back and your files back if they disappeared when the virus hit you.

If I didn’t make it clear before. This is not a real virus scanner. This is not a real antivirus. This is a virus and will cause stress on your regular computer usage. You will be at your best interest to remove this resource hog bloated garbage and do not give these people money. do not give these people your personal information.

THIS IS A VIRUS!

PC Protection – My Fresh Install Rules

1. first thing is go into control panel and into Administrative Tools and then Services and then scroll down to messenger and turn it off.(also telnet if I think I will not be using it)

2. Set up blocking of websites by adjusting my Hosts file
3. go get A-Squared it finds adware and spyware and some virus and trojans.

4. Check router firewall and dmz settings.

5. get ad-aware . it’s pretty much the same as a-squared but finds other stuff .

6.get spybot search and destroy, similar to adaware and a-squared.

7. install firefox and use that instead of explorer

8.install thunderbird and use that instead of outlook

9. save an online virus scanner to favorites

10. practice safe surfing (no clicking links in email… ever, pay attention to site names when using search engine, do not install any addons that come with freeware, never reply to any email that says ” you stuff is in jeopardy”, call business’s for verification to any emergency emails,never give out passwords to anyone on the net or in real life)

What you do is what you have to live with. asking people for advice is a safe bet… Some times..?

have fun good luck