For those of you who service home PCs...

[Shawn]

what do you usually do when you encounter a virus?

I went over the house of a coworker of my gf's mom to set up their new printer. All I knew was it was it worked for a while and then stopped working. I agreed to come that same day after they had dinner. Well it ended up being around 8pm. It was late, but I figured that was ok because it was probably something simple that I could fix quick.

Boy was I wrong. I get on there and the computer is so slow I can't get anything accomplished. The computer only has 512MB of ram and I notice all of it is used even though there is no visible program using it. It literally took a good 2-3 mins just to load My Computer, another 2-3min to load the Task Manager, and about 5 mins to load msconfig.The lady mentions that her antivirus software keeps telling her it's expired and I tell her I can get her one for free. By this point I'm convinced that her computer is infected so I download Avast Antivirus and Ad-Aware and remove the old expired Norton crap.

Well after about an hour and a half the lady is starting to get pissed that I've made no progress. I was finally able to run a scan with Adaware in safe mode but it didn't find anything. I found the virus that was running as a fake MS service, but even when I disabled it with msconfig it kept reenabling itself to start on boot. Since it was getting late and the lady wanted me out of there I had Avast load on startup and run over night and automatically fix any problems.

Of course the lady tells my gf's mom today that her printer still doesn't work and that the computer is still slow.

cliffs:
Come over to set up printer
find virus
spend 1.5 hours trying to get rid of it
lady gets pissed i'm still there so i have Avast run over night
doesn't remove virus
printer still doesn't work (most likely because there is no free memory for the print service to run)

 

[PieIsAwesome]

In such sitations I would just format, walk away, come back, install drivers and antivirus, and done.

Trying to set anything up on a horribly slow, infected computer is so. . . frustrating. Just nuke it and start over.

 

[Chiboy]

Rougefix..

 

[Cyco]

Tell her to pay you or STFU. Oh, and run that stuff in safe mode, works most of the time.

 

[Shawn]

That's always what I do with my own computers, but when you do it for someone else they get pissed off because you have to wipe out everything, especially if you miss something while backing up. I think from now on though I'm just going to state that if I find a virus a reformat is required.

 

[lxskllr]

I don't do much outside of my house. In your situation, I'd tell her I'd have to take the machine home with me, and fixing may require a total wipe of the drive, and to let me know what's important to backup. I've never had to do a reinstall, but I make it clear that that is a possibility. The purpose for taking it to my house is so I don't have someone hanging over my shoulder, and for my comfort.

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: Cyco
Tell her to pay you or STFU. Oh, and run that stuff in safe mode, works most of the time.

She did pay me. Felt bad her printer still didn't work though.

 

[guyver01]

Originally posted by: Shawn
Well after about an hour and a half the lady is starting to get pissed that I've made no progress.

at that point i would been like..

"well... here then is where i quote you my fees... your computer has serious problems, and if you want me to fix it in a TIMELY fashion, the following charges will apply.."

 

[Locut0s]

Originally posted by: lxskllr
I don't do much outside of my house. In your situation, I'd tell her I'd have to take the machine home with me, and fixing may require a total wipe of the drive, and to let me know what's important to backup. I've never had to do a reinstall, but I make it clear that that is a possibility. The purpose for taking it to my house is so I don't have someone hanging over my shoulder, and for my comfort.

This.

 

[Yzzim]

Have a similar situation now except the computer has 256mb memory (video shared, of course) and it's taking freaking forever to get anything done. Loaded Malwarebytes and couldn't get the program to run, apparently the virus disabled the program from running. Had to rename it and now I'm finally doing a scan.

Helping people with computer stuff can really be a pain sometimes.

 

[JEDIYoda]

Originally posted by: Cyco
Tell her to pay you or STFU. Oh, and run that stuff in safe mode, works most of the time.

Thats what i would do but on ocasion i have found that there is sometimes access to the interent even in safe mode so i always disconnect the interenet...

 

[thescreensavers]

First Malwarebytes rather then Ad-Aware

Second its best to use a rescue CD to scan for viruses if the comps that slow imo.

And Antivir> Avast

 

[cirthix]

format >*

 

[Shawn]

I'll check out Malwarebytes but makes Antivir better than Avast?

 

[lxskllr]

Build an Ultimate Boot CD For Windows. It has several malware tools, as well as other tools for fixing computers. It's probably the most used tool I own...

http://www.ubcd4win.com/

 

[QueBert]

Originally posted by: Shawn
I'll check out Malwarebytes but makes Antivir better than Avast?

Avast has the boot time scan, I don't think Antivir does. I fix computers for a living and the boot time scan of Avast is the greatest thing ever. It makes shit so much easier. I use spybot + avast, and if it's really bad Trend Micro house call. Avast is not the best AV software, but Antivir isn't any better IMHO.

 

[lxskllr]

Originally posted by: QueBert
Avast is not the best AV software, but Antivir isn't any better IMHO.

http://www.av-comparatives.org...ndret/avc_report22.pdf

 

[Quiksilver]

Originally posted by: lxskllr

Originally posted by: QueBert
Avast is not the best AV software, but Antivir isn't any better IMHO.

http://www.av-comparatives.org...ndret/avc_report22.pdf

On top of that its lightweight. Only uses about 10 to 12 MB... after it finishes loading.

 

[QueBert]

Originally posted by: lxskllr

Originally posted by: QueBert
Avast is not the best AV software, but Antivir isn't any better IMHO.

http://www.av-comparatives.org...ndret/avc_report22.pdf

I ran Anti-Vir for 6 months, I've never seen so many false positive results in my life. For that alone it should be rated way down. I ran Avast for a few years and it had a lot of false positives too, but nowhere near as many as Anti-Vir. I pay for NOD32 now, and it's light years ahead of Anti-Vir.

 

[lxskllr]

Originally posted by: QueBert

I ran Anti-Vir for 6 months, I've never seen so many false positive results in my life. For that alone it should be rated way down. I ran Avast for a few years and it had a lot of false positives too, but nowhere near as many as Anti-Vir. I pay for NOD32 now, and it's light years ahead of Anti-Vir.

I don't get many false positives. Most of the ones I do get are for lower level system tools that could be used for nefarious activities, or look like they could be.

 

[Quiksilver]

Originally posted by: QueBert

Originally posted by: lxskllr

Originally posted by: QueBert
Avast is not the best AV software, but Antivir isn't any better IMHO.

http://www.av-comparatives.org...ndret/avc_report22.pdf

I ran Anti-Vir for 6 months, I've never seen so many false positive results in my life. For that alone it should be rated way down. I ran Avast for a few years and it had a lot of false positives too, but nowhere near as many as Anti-Vir. I pay for NOD32 now, and it's light years ahead of Anti-Vir.

maybe you should stop messing around with such suspicious files/site/etc then? or stop putting heuristics on high... especially if you having false postives on AVG too... considering that crap is worse than norton in my experiences.

Avira hasn't given me any problems in almost 3 years since I started using it...

 

[BigPoppa]

Those tests in the av-comparitives aren't for the free products. That alone is going to change what you get.

 

[lxskllr]

Originally posted by: BigPoppa
Those tests in the av-comparitives aren't for the free products. That alone is going to change what you get.

For the purposes of those tests, the free edition is the same as the pay for edition for the products I've used. In the case of Avira, POP scanning is the only meaningful feature that gets left out, and that's not that big a deal.

 

[thescreensavers]

Originally posted by: QueBert

Originally posted by: Shawn
I'll check out Malwarebytes but makes Antivir better than Avast?

Avast has the boot time scan, I don't think Antivir does. I fix computers for a living and the boot time scan of Avast is the greatest thing ever. It makes shit so much easier. I use spybot + avast, and if it's really bad Trend Micro house call. Avast is not the best AV software, but Antivir isn't any better IMHO.

Antivir has a Rescue CD.

I haven't had any issues with fals positives. But once you get a false positive you can look it up and see if its good or bad if its good add it to the list to skip. Its not hard.

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: QueBert

Originally posted by: lxskllr

Originally posted by: QueBert
Avast is not the best AV software, but Antivir isn't any better IMHO.

http://www.av-comparatives.org...ndret/avc_report22.pdf

I ran Anti-Vir for 6 months, I've never seen so many false positive results in my life. For that alone it should be rated way down. I ran Avast for a few years and it had a lot of false positives too, but nowhere near as many as Anti-Vir. I pay for NOD32 now, and it's light years ahead of Anti-Vir.

Every time you get a real false positive, submit it to Avira as a false positive. I did this and they fixed one that was coming up for me a bunch in a timely manner. Never got that false positive again.