I recently was reading a friend's Blog and she was disturbed by a pest attack on her computer... I've given out this advice on many occasions, but fingured maybe I'd just share it with the world... (Or the dozen or so people reading this anyhow).
If you want to keep your Windows free of pests like viruses, adware, and spyware (not to mention the newer classes: MalWare and ExtortionWare), try out the following list. I run ALL of these together, and together they form a nice protective shield to prevent pests from being installed, as well as a formidable scanning chorus for detection and removal of those VERY few that might manage to slip through...
And wow, I'm so nice, I have provided links to download all these programs (well, except Norton's, because it's too big... but it MIGHT be available upon request) ...
The 4 big items I use to keep things tidy... I run all of these scanners every few days...
Norton Anti-Virus -- The 2005 version does pick up quite a few spyware and adware pests (along with the obvious viruses), but sucks at removing them -- however it does point out the exact locations for manual removals....
Pest Patrol Professional -- By far not the best pest remover, but it picks up stuff the others miss... It's memory-resident modules Cookie Patrol and MemCheck are quite powerful at stopping baddies..
AdAware SE Professional -- Unlike the free Personal edition, this one's USEFULL!! And the Pro version comes with Ad-Watch which is VERY effective for BLOCKING spyware and adware installs. Ad-Aware catches a ton of stuff that others miss, and it's pretty fast too.
Microsoft AntiSpyware Tool -- I have been running the beta of this for at least 6 months now, and its scanning and removal capabilities are excellent. Additionally, the memory-resident blockers in this program are very thorough. Since it's a Microsoft program (only works on Windows XP with SP2), it manages to hook into Windows more thoroughly than other pest software... (Read: much more effective blocking)
With all 4 of these installed, you have awesome virus protection, and overlapping pest protection, making for a very decent estimated 99% (or better, in my experience) protection from new pests, and pretty much total detection and removal abilities.
I've used this combination for many months now and have only had maybe a dozen pests slip through in all that time -- and I'm on risky websites and getting risky downloads CONSTANTLY..
** Be sure to run the updaters in each program regularly (minimum weekly) to ensure you have the LATEST version of the programs, as well as the latest pest definitions! With AdAware Pro, you can install the version linked here, and then when you run the updater, it'll tell you a newer version is available for download. Download and install it. It'll still work, as long as you installed this one first =)
