Must-have virus/spyware/maleware programs?

A

Anthony Ferrante

I have a collection of programs I run every weekend in hopes of
protecting my system. To those who are real knowledgeable about these
things, is this adequate or should I have something else I may be
unaware of, or am I overdoing it?

Here is what I run:

Nod32
A-Squared
AVG-anti rootkit-free
AVG anti-spyware (formerly Ewindo)
CCleaner
Clean-up
Webroot's SpySweeper
Spyware Terminator
Spyware Blaster

and occasionally:

Evidence Eliminator
CyberScrup Privacy Suite
 
M

MoiMoi

ferrante276- said:
I have a collection of programs I run every weekend in hopes of
protecting my system. To those who are real knowledgeable about these
things, is this adequate or should I have something else I may be
unaware of, or am I overdoing it?

Here is what I run:

Nod32
A-Squared
AVG-anti rootkit-free
AVG anti-spyware (formerly Ewindo)
CCleaner
Clean-up
Webroot's SpySweeper
Spyware Terminator
Spyware Blaster

and occasionally:

Evidence Eliminator
CyberScrup Privacy Suite
Click to expand...

Do you actually use the computer for anything except looking for
baddies?

MM
 
B

badgolferman

Anthony said:
I have a collection of programs I run every weekend in hopes of
protecting my system. To those who are real knowledgeable about these
things, is this adequate or should I have something else I may be
unaware of, or am I overdoing it?

Here is what I run:

Nod32
A-Squared
AVG-anti rootkit-free
AVG anti-spyware (formerly Ewindo)
CCleaner
Clean-up
Webroot's SpySweeper
Spyware Terminator
Spyware Blaster

and occasionally:

Evidence Eliminator
CyberScrup Privacy Suite
Click to expand...


What kind of websites are you visiting?
 
C

countrybumbill

I have a collection of programs I run every weekend in hopes of
protecting my system. To those who are real knowledgeable about these
things, is this adequate or should I have something else I may be
unaware of, or am I overdoing it?

Here is what I run:

Nod32
A-Squared
AVG-anti rootkit-free
AVG anti-spyware (formerly Ewindo)
CCleaner
Clean-up
Webroot's SpySweeper
Spyware Terminator
Spyware Blaster

and occasionally:

Evidence Eliminator
CyberScrup Privacy Suite
Click to expand...

REAL Paranoid!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i use AVG and thats it. of course i do not use IE i use Firefox
 
D

Dave Cohen

REAL Paranoid!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i use AVG and thats it. of course i do not use IE i use Firefox
Click to expand...

Same here and zone alarm.
I've never got a virus and the only time I ever got a warning was when I
attempted to download some file, which action I cancelled.
Best of all I keep an image of os and program files which while not done
for malware protection is a fallback if machine ever should be
hopelessly infected.
Dave Cohen
 
J

Judicandus

Same here and zone alarm.
I've never got a virus and the only time I ever got a warning was when I
attempted to download some file, which action I cancelled.
Best of all I keep an image of os and program files which while not done
for malware protection is a fallback if machine ever should be
hopelessly infected.
Dave Cohen
Click to expand...

I agree completely with Dave..., more than once I've found myself with
a trojan that only one or two antiviruses in www.virustotal.com list
would detect. Having an image of the OS partition with the programs
you want I think is by far the best option :D
 
A

Anthony Ferrante

Well, I guess I am over-doing it. I do an awful lot of online banking
and I get paranoid that someone will get my passwords and all of that.
Otherwise, I just do normal crap, but I hear so much about identity
theft that I try and prevent it.

Anthony
 
L

louise

Judicandus said:
I agree completely with Dave..., more than once I've found myself with
a trojan that only one or two antiviruses in www.virustotal.com list
would detect. Having an image of the OS partition with the programs
you want I think is by far the best option :D
Click to expand...

I agree also, but I do it a little differently. I use two
large external drives

I use Ghost and I image my entire hard drive about every 3 -
4 weeks and I keep the most recent 3 or 4 images.
Therefore, were I to become infected, I could go back as
much as 12 weeks. I would have my OS, my programs, and most
of my data.

Then, I do a file backup every night using Dantz Retrospect.
So hopefully, if I needed certain files newer than the
image backup I'd restored, I could get them from my nightly
backup and make sure they weren't infected before returning
them to my C drive.

Third line of defense is mozy.com - for offsite nightly
backup of crucial files.

I run NOD and SuperAntiSpyware resident. Every so often I
run Spybot, CCleaner, ASquared and Pavark - but not every
one of these every week. Maybe one of them every week or two.

To keep things orderly, not a real protection, I run JV16
registry cleaner and then ntregopt to optimize the cleaned
up registry. I find my machine stays a little faster as a
result.

I also use process explorer on a regular basis, a quick
glance will tell you if there's anything really funny going on.

Louise
 
A

Anthony Ferrante

I use Ghost and I image my entire hard drive about every 3 -
Click to expand...

Could you tell me some more about Ghost and what it is about it that
you like?

Thanks!
 
L

louise

Anthony said:
Could you tell me some more about Ghost and what it is about it that
you like?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

It is backup software that allows you to create a full image
of your drive, usually onto an external hard drive.

Then should you need to reinstall everything on your system,
say a new disk, you install the OS and then you install
Ghost and then you restore the image from your backup. When
all goes well, you've got the same hard drive you had,
except it's a new or cleaned drive.

You can clone your disk to a new drive - perhaps a larger one.

Ghost also provides for incremental backups but I found it a
little clumsy to use and prefer to use a different program
for that.

I am using an old version of Ghost: version 9 on Win XP Pro
and some things may have changed.

Ghost is made by Symantec and Symantec is not usually a
beloved company - however, I've been happy with this program
for several years.

Another imaging program that works similarly and offers
similar features is Acronis - you might want to seriously
compare the two as my info is a little old on this.

Louise
 
J

Jeff Gaines

Another imaging program that works similarly and offers similar features
is Acronis - you might want to seriously compare the two as my info is a
little old on this.
Click to expand...

Acronis TrueImage is very god. I use it to image my OS disk so instead of
re-installing (and re-activating) the OS and software I just restore the
image, takes about 10 minutes. I don't keep any data on the OS drive.
 
F

FredW

[email protected] said:
I am using an old version of Ghost: version 9 on Win XP Pro
and some things may have changed.

Ghost is made by Symantec and Symantec is not usually a
beloved company - however, I've been happy with this program
for several years.

Another imaging program that works similarly and offers
similar features is Acronis - you might want to seriously
compare the two as my info is a little old on this.
Click to expand...

Maybe you can have a look at this:
http://www.computeractive.co.uk/hdmanager8/index

Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8 is a combination of
Paragon Exact Image and Paragon Partition Manager.

It states that the offer expires on April 11, 2007,
but I downloaded the program on February 27, 2008.
During the install process you can register and then you receive an
email with codes and you have a full working product.
(this procedure takes only a few minutes)
 
L

Larry Sabo

FredW said:
Maybe you can have a look at this:
http://www.computeractive.co.uk/hdmanager8/index

Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8 is a combination of
Paragon Exact Image and Paragon Partition Manager.

It states that the offer expires on April 11, 2007,
but I downloaded the program on February 27, 2008.
During the install process you can register and then you receive an
email with codes and you have a full working product.
(this procedure takes only a few minutes)
Click to expand...


Great program, but does not support Vista. I use it in Compatibility
mode, but there are some functions it won't perform in that mode, and
it has no bootable media rescue disc to if the drive withthe program
dies, you need to run the program from a functioning system to restore
the drive image, a major problem. Acronis True Image and Ghost allow
you to create a rescue CD, so no need to install an OS on the new
replacement drive first.

Re Acronis true Image versus Ghost, be sure to read this review...

http://www.techsupportalert.com/drive-imaging-reviews.htm

Cheers,
Larry
 
F

FredW

it has no bootable media rescue disc to if the drive withthe program
dies, you need to run the program from a functioning system to restore
Click to expand...

Not true.
I started the program and selected:
- Tools
- Recovery Media Builder
and there I can create a CD/DVD to "make all recovery features
available".

the drive image, a major problem. Acronis True Image and Ghost allow
you to create a rescue CD, so no need to install an OS on the new
replacement drive first.
Click to expand...

Yes, so the Paragon program has the same facility!
Please check what you write before you make incorrect statements about
non-existing "major" problems.
:-(
 
L

Larry Sabo

FredW said:
(e-mail address removed) says... [snip]
it has no bootable media rescue disc to if the drive withthe program
dies, you need to run the program from a functioning system to restore
Click to expand...

Not true.
I started the program and selected:
- Tools
- Recovery Media Builder
and there I can create a CD/DVD to "make all recovery features
available".
Click to expand...

Thank you for this; I didn't see it previously, although I confess to
not having searched exhaustively. I tried it and successfully moved a
partition and resize the Extended partition of which it was a
part--something I was unable to do using the program from within
Windows because it couldn't lock the partition.
Yes, so the Paragon program has the same facility!
Please check what you write before you make incorrect statements about
non-existing "major" problems.
:-(
Click to expand...

I am happy to stand corrected, although less so with your brusque
manner.

Larry
 
B

buddyb

FredW said:
Great program, but does not support Vista. I use it in Compatibility
mode, but there are some functions it won't perform in that mode, and
it has no bootable media rescue disc to if the drive withthe program
dies, you need to run the program from a functioning system to restore
the drive image, a major problem. Acronis True Image and Ghost allow
you to create a rescue CD, so no need to install an OS on the new
replacement drive first.

Re Acronis true Image versus Ghost, be sure to read this review...

http://www.techsupportalert.com/drive-imaging-reviews.htm

Cheers,
Larry
Click to expand...

I`ve also used True Image 9 to image my complete C & D (programs) drvs
and put on new drives. Programs worked fine from the new drives.
Saved me weeks of work.
Regards
buddy b
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
J

Judicandus

Great program, but does not support Vista. I use it in Compatibility
mode, but there are some functions it won't perform in that mode, and
it has no bootable media rescue disc to if the drive withthe program
dies, you need to run the program from a functioning system to restore
the drive image, a major problem. Acronis True Image and Ghost allow
you to create a rescue CD, so no need to install an OS on the new
replacement drive first.
Click to expand...

Another good program is DriveImage XML (free) http://www.runtime.org/dixml.htm
(supports Vista).
And if you could also make a BartPE boot CD with it installed so that
it isn't necessary to attach another Hard Disk.

I use both DriveImage XML and Ghost and they are both great programs.

Cheers
Dan
 
C

comajorr

louise said:
It is backup software that allows you to create a full image of your
drive, usually onto an external hard drive.

Then should you need to reinstall everything on your system, say a new
disk, you install the OS and then you install Ghost and then you restore
the image from your backup. When all goes well, you've got the same
hard drive you had, except it's a new or cleaned drive.

You can clone your disk to a new drive - perhaps a larger one.

Ghost also provides for incremental backups but I found it a little
clumsy to use and prefer to use a different program for that.

I am using an old version of Ghost: version 9 on Win XP Pro and some
things may have changed.

Ghost is made by Symantec and Symantec is not usually a beloved company
- however, I've been happy with this program for several years.

Another imaging program that works similarly and offers similar features
is Acronis - you might want to seriously compare the two as my info is a
little old on this.

Louise
Click to expand...
I use Spyware Doctor and threatfire along with AVG antivirus and zone
alarm free firewall. Also my network is behind a linksys NAT router. I
also scan once a week with F-secure online malware scanner which I find
to be very thorough. To top it off I image my entire drive with Acronis
True Image 11 to an external HDD. If you are doing online banking you
can never be too safe as the bad guys are getting real clever!
 
B

buddyb

I have cloned the C drive (a partition), and put it on a smaller drive.
It made the partition smaller.
I didn`t realize this and would have gotten the same or larger drive.
Had to repartition to give C more space.
I like Acronis.True.Image, v9. simple to use after I printed the help
file and studied for 30 minutes.
The procedure is relatively simple.

Regards
buddy b
 
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