Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Pond Boss Tom G

He called Saturday and still has viruses that are clobbering his PC. He thought they were fixed but they came roaring back. It sounds like his hard drive is pretty well hosed.

With temps in the 20's and an unheated shop, work is pretty well impossible. He's about to go nuts or maybe nuttier.

Like Michael Biehn said in Aliens, the only way to get rid of them for sure is to take off and nuke the place from orbit.

I think Tom could handle that approach.

Does wiping out everything and reinstalling the operating system work?

Hopefully Tom will get this fixed soon. I get very very nervous when Tom goes off grid.

Why? Thinking about him sneaking up and putting another present under your chair?

It happened to me. I removed the hard drive, installed another one and had a friend come by and install a new operating system.

maybe its the "pond" sites

the "pond" industry has figured out all kinds of ways to infiltrate PCs.

gotta be real careful where you go these days you know.

kidding aside, hope you get it fixed tom, what a pain.

You could take it to a reputable computer shop, even the Geek Squad, and they can clean it up for you and save all the info. Or, you can just re-format the HD and start from scratch.

I had a striping raid array setup once, lost an allocation bit on one of the drives. Estimate was between 2-3K with no guarantee for recovery. Best guy's around here couldn't do it and had to send it to a lab in Chi Town to try, with no guarantee, but I would still have to pay.

I decided to click the format button, lost a bunch of Cad files, and spent about 3 weeks rebuilding QB to accuracy. It was a better choice and everything works fine today. This was 2005.

I have 3 puters I use on a regular basis and 5 external backup HD's that spin on a regular basis, plus 3 static drives.

I use McAfee and Norton with all the bullets to keep things clean.

My brother used some AVG stuff by Google and last week had four various viruses and Trojans and subsequently installed 360. It was cleaned out quite well, and works good.

Not an advocate for any program, what works for you is your decision, but it pays to keep the bug's out. And that is not 100%, but you can get really close.

I have only had (1) Trojan in 12 years. In 2007, because that puter was off for 3 months and my other brother decided to play online games while I was away and turned off the security. I came back and was a bit upset. He denied it, but history proved it.

Keep the bug's out, get something that works, and then you could reduce this

quote from JKB "I use McAfee and Norton with all the bullets to keep things clean.

My brother used some AVG stuff by Google and last week had four various viruses and Trojans and subsequently installed 360. It was cleaned out quite well, and works good."

JKB...can you elaborate. I have used and know a lot of folks that use AVG and say good things about it; but 1 Trojan in 12 yrs is pretty impressive. I now have a free download from Microsoft..security essentials that is catching all now; but want to know more. What is 360? McAfee or Norton, which is better and/or do they each have certain advantages over the other?

360 is from Norton. It has a bunch of features as well as McAfee.

AVG took less than three weeks to infest his computer and had to have Norton to rip the stuff out.

Both, Norton and McAfee are pains in the butt because they run all the time, but they really keep everything clean.

The one Trojan in 12 years was because my other brother was playing online games and had turned off the security.

With either, I feel safe walking into a pit of snakes without getting bit. That is just my experience.

I used Nortons full package for a couple of years & had problems with it. Several times it screwed up & instructed me to uninstall & reinstall. Last time it did it I couldn't reactivate even though I had paid up only a month earlier. Phone calls & e-mails were useless.
I did alot of research & got Trend Micro. Best protection I have EVER had! ZERO problems in 2 years!

JKB, have you had to uninstall & reinstall Nortons?

Norton failed for me. I installed it when I bought the PC. Then one day I was working along and it told me I had a virus that it couldn't repair. I bought the package to prevent viruses, not identify them after the fact.

No, haven't had that problem. They just suck bandwidth and cpu resources cause they run all the time. And the popup permissions sometimes get on my nerves.

I prefer Norton over the McAfee, but both seem to require more and more resources every upgrade.

DD1, I would give the edge to McAfee as a better preventative measure over Norton, but only by a touch.

I never had any issues with either in all the years I've had them.

Both suck up bandwidth and cpu resources.

Yes they do!

But I usually have several products by McAfee or Norton installed at one time, and they all need updating and need to run to check things out.

I sometimes just reboot the puter to turn off the scans for a while, cause ya cant shut it down when it starts.

I wish they had a big X button to click to stop the scans

I can pause or stop the scans with Trend Micro.

Thanks for the tip.

I have been testing Trend Micro for the past two weeks on the 30 day trial basis, and so far I like it

Scans are quick, less than half the time of McAfee. Updates are more frequent and smaller. Not like the other two who seem to wait till they have a monster file, and they always hit while I am trying to open a 40mb attachment in my email. (CAD files)

I think I should clean out my laptop (oh Joy, Joy) over 800,000 files

I am also trying out a new internet service this week here in the boonies, so hopefully I can boot this Sprint service I have. None of the cable or DSL services are willing to venture the infrastructure for a few accounts.

Anyway,
Thanks Ric, looks like Trend Micro is the one I am going with after my sub. expires on the 22nd.

JKB, please keep updating us on the Trend Micro. Also the new service. If you can receive a 40M attachment, must not be too bad now. How long does that take? Is that before unzipping it?

Microsoft Essentials suggested by, I think, Eddie Walker, has been catching a lot of stuff on other folks thumb drives when getting service manuals and such from them.

There is no silver bullet for this problem.

We have hundreds of clients and mostly use AVG, McAfee, and Vipre. No free trials or free versions. The business versions provide the most reliable protection. You can control when the scans occur and how often your protection is updated in any of the mainstream applications.

Since there are no guarantees, backing up your valuable data is essential.

We have tools that we use to recover from most viral, trojan, rootkit, and etc. infections. If those tools fail to revive a system OS we recover the data from the drive, install a new drive in the infected system, reinstall the operating system and then restore the clean data.

In a worst case senario without a backup you are talking $250-$300 labor to recover a basket case.

Will do on the Trend Micro updates.

The new service is only offered locally to cover the gaping hole traditional internet providers won't cover. Can't sell internet to a Forrest. Closest sprint tower is about nine miles as the bird flies, or else about 20 if you drive. Heck, about six miles away (road travel) is the broadcasting tower for a Grand Rapids Television Station. I have amplified antennas and digital TV and barely get a signal. GR is a good 40 miles away.

40M files you can get through gmail or aol. Time is dependent on how the Sprint service is working. Sometimes it works pretty good and I have little complaints, just depends where they rout me out of, and environmental conditions.

My experience with Sprint is they oversold their bandwidth, and unless you are next to a tower, you will get booted to a server that could be on the west coast, DIED country. Worst place to get routed to is Radnor or Toledo Ohio, Dial Up is a much more pleasant experience. Latency is much better out of Florida and Kansas City than Ohio and Michigan.

If things slow down, usually I disconnect and search for new service, then reconnect. Usually works for a while, then a do over.

What pisses me off is I have a Business Account, paid on time automatically every month, and WE are supposed to have Priority

Sorry about the little rant, but I pay a premium for this service. And it has FAILED Miserably. And Sprint still say they cover our area.

Fortunately, my contracts are up as of last October

I have looked into Wild Blue Satellite Internet, plus others. Local rep. said they maxed out and could not sell anymore bandwidth to new customers unless they could shove up more space junk. Hughes is a joke, they have the same Satellite problem, but will take your money.

Another rant, But out here in the DEAD ZONE, ya kinda look into this stuff.

or spend the money up front and buy a Mac and forget about all the PC problems. I have a PC and a Mac of about the same age, but will not buy another PC. I like things as simple as possible, and see no reason for complexity with no benefit.

If everyone did that then the focus of puke-ware purveyors would adjust their focus to the Mac. There is nothing inherent in a Mac that makes them anymore secure then a PC. It is just that there are so few of them compared to the PC.

There is no silver bullet.

Unfortunately, I have rather expensive software that wont run on a MAC, otherwise I would have one. Would be nice!

I have to run XP on my laptop to be compatible with the machines I have to tap in to on ships.

There were some small boats(tug/tows) that the owner's so called teckies had placed PCs with Vista on them. I guess they were for GP use, but also ran chart software. One or 2 looks at that; I decided to not touch Vista. Does anyone have or has used it? What do you think? What about 7? Not so computer savvy, so not interested in changing horses on a whim.