anti-virus 2009

[trixian]

You can always boot up a Linux distro, preferably on a bootable usb memstick, and try the anti virus utility available through your package manager (Linux usually doesn't come with one pre installed).

[mikeh]

I had a trojan on my computer last year. The only way I could stop it coming back was to delete the google toolbar, uninstall my virus programme (avast) and download a trojan search utility. I also manually stopped the virus process and deleted the files manually. I found out I had to delete avast and the google toolbar by mistake. It seems that the virus actually uses these programmes to replicate itself. Might be worth a try getting rid of any toolbars installed via internet explorer.

I now only download messages etc on my laptop. It is all part of the same network but if anything dodgy happens its only my laptop that gets affected.

All my toolbars were deleted during early attempts. It would seem that launching IE when the trojan file is enabled stsrts the virus all over again. Right now, since the trojan file is disabled, IE runs with no incidents.

I'll spend some time getting to know the services on her machine, then if i can't sort out which one is the trojan, I'll install /format.

I asked our IT how they handle viruses and they said that if they can't find it in under a half an hour then they just re-image the computer since all our computers are ghosted. (Something i haven't done with my wifes computer). It makes things easy for them but is a pain for whomever had their computer ghosted because they have to go in and redo customization of their software all over again and take care of things that occurred since the ghosting.
mh