CommonSense Anti-Virus
Ok, Well may I first explain I been on computers and the internet since the early 80's.. In all that time I can probably count on a few hands and a foot how many bad Viruses have infected my system.. which, really never had one to kill a system and been given by friends most likely by accident and without common sense engaged I ran them..
Now than.. After all this talk about virus prorgams and browsers, I ignored my common sense once again on how to avoid these things and went ahead and INSTALLED AVG anti-virus to see what all this talk was about. I have long ago discarded and avoided norton and Mcafwhatever.. knowing these programs hook into a system and do more damage and degrade performance more than any virus has ever done to a system of mine (note: I say mine, others do like these things for some reason.).. Ok well, for the last 3 hours or so I have been rebuilding my MBR with windows CD and using chkdsk /r.. (hit F10 to get to the recovery tools in Windows XP cd) because.. well.. I assume because AVG killed my MBR one way or another while checking it for a virus.. (it happened, what can I say except be warned) Blue screen of death Unmountable_boot_ yuck.. have not seen one of those in a long long long time...
May I suggest the following for proper system security:
1: Always install the windows updates.
2: Use a firewall such as jetico, which is a free one that works fine.
3: Use a sniffer program to see what/who is changing your system. Winpartol is a good one. You will have Scotty on patrol for any changes.
4: Use an online scanner such as Housecalls (look here:
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ ) once a month or every other month to check on anything that may have sneaked past the above two.. which will be minimal at best.
5: Use a Browser other than the Internet Explorer included with windows as it is the most popular to attack for adware-spyware etc. Firefox has been suggested and is good although I perfer Opera. Both will need plug-ins for some sites but work fine. These also have attack possibilities but are less prone to them as everyone likes making attacks on IE used by millions. As for adware your seeing in spyware programs and anti-virus programs, they really don't amount to much if any damage to a system.. they collect site informastion you have went to so they can throw pop-ups at you is about all.. most defeated now with the latter two browsers.
6:Never run an executable program you do not trust or know from a user or website. this does not mean some trial/demo software or game demo from a site you know is honest..if thats possible..
7:And most Important.. COMMON SENSE.. if you must decide to run that free downloaded software from someplace.. use the restore feature first in windows and than run it.. anything goes wrong just backup to previous restore point.
8: don't sweat the small stuff.. and its all small stuff. Any important files you may have on a system..banking etc.. back them up on CD or floppy just to be on the safe side.. stop and think about it.. everything you have on your system can most likely be had again. If not back it up safely to the same CD.
9: If your a profesional running a dedicated server, maybe more security is needed. I doubt anti-virus software is the solution though.
10: Common Sense will help performance by using less programs and will enhance your Internet experience by not worrying about attacks which usually do little harm to the end home user.
