I've been running Eset's NOD32 as my antivirus program, and thought I had good all around protection from threats to my computer, I hadn't had any problems of that sort for years. Now though I had the unpleasant surprise of being redirected to an extremely adult website while trying to get to the Adventure Gamers website, and it made me wonder just how well protected my computer really is. A little research informs me that antivirus programs aren't good at handling malware attacks of that sort, and so I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on good supplemental programs protecting against that. I know Malware Bytes and SuperAntiSpyware get good marks in that line. Any opinions on these programs? Or other suggestions?

I've used MalwareBytes for several years and it seems to do the trick. For main AV I go with the free home version of Avast and again no complaints.

That said I will occasionally get one of those redirect type bots - usually a search engine like AVG. But the ones that have gotten through have been pretty easy to dispatch. A year or two ago I got nailed with one of those bogus AntiAV viruses - that took an online search for remedies to disable and remove.

I periodically mirror my OS so if anything real bad happens I can roll back. I prefer the technique over System Restore which I long ago disabled, since it wipes the C drive clean each time and only takes a few minutes to do. I only keep the OS and a few essential apps on C, so it's pretty slim.

Good luck! 

OK, I gave MalwareBytes a try and it says I'm clear, so hopefully no damage was done. And you make a good point about mirroring, I've never tried it, but I'll consider it next time I have a fresh install. Thanks for the advice!

I've been using C-drive imaging (aka mirroring) for as long as there has been utilities to do it. (My favorite for several years has been Acronis TrueImage- there are cheaper and even free programs available, but you give up reliability and flexibility with a number of them.)

I have never used an antivirus program and in fact, the first thing I would do with a new laptop is erase the Norton (or whatever else) antivirus program that was installed, looking at it as nothing but bloatware...at least as far as I was concerned. I have never had anything occur that my C-drive image didn't get me out of and that was usually a hard disk failure, not a virus. And that's part of the benefit of imaging- it will get you out of more trouble than an antivirus program. But you have to image your c-drive regularly to make it work. On any given desktop or laptop of mine there are several C-drive images on Drive D or E and in addition, several more on separate USB backup drives that can be stored elsewhere.

Tincup also alluded to the other part of the imaging process: Keep your C-drive lean and mean so that your C-drive images don't get humongous. After all, if a virus hits, it will usually be in the OS or somewhere on the C-drive; your other actual or virtual drives will likely not be affected so keep all the big stuff on them.

I always keep System Restore active for the C-drive. Restore acts more as a backup of the Registry than anything else so before I install any new program, I set a Restore Point. If the program screws up the registry or if I just don't want to keep the program, I deinstall it and then return to the Restore Point. That returns the Registry to where it was before the program install and keeps the Registry lean and mean. Of course, I could accomplish the same thing by making a C-drive image before installing any program and restore the image after if it screwed things up or I didn't want the program, but that would be rather tedious.

Thanks for the info on imaging, SirDave. Though I doubt I'd be brave enough to go without antivirus protection altogether, I agree to some extent with your bloatware comment. My current antivirus program is largely non-intrusive, but some antivirus software (a version of Norton, in particular) that I've used in the past seemed nearly as bad as a virus.

@ SirDave. How much bulk do the restore points you keep add to C:? The idea is interesting. My current C [OS/essential apps] weighs in at 7gb, which Acronis distills to 2.7gb, not much really. Maybe just keeping 1 restore point [by periodically using the "delete all but the last restore point" option] makes sense for more casual rollbacks like you say.

I love Acronis too - it's the first thing I install after the OS and immediately mirror the fresh install. Then I make a few progressive mirrors as chipset, drivers, apps and periferals are added. Makes it very easy to roll back to near pristine points whenever the urge for a total games makeover, or major component upgrade strikes.

On a related note, don't use Ad-Aware to remove your spy/adware. They have apparently been purchased by a big adware company:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/11/lavasoft_has_new_owners/

Originally Posted By tincup2 (4 JUN 2012 2:45pm)

@ SirDave. How much bulk do the restore points you keep add to C:? The idea is interesting. My current C [OS/essential apps] weighs in at 7gb, which Acronis distills to 2.7gb, not much really. Maybe just keeping 1 restore point [by periodically using the "delete all but the last restore point" option] makes sense for more casual rollbacks like you say.

I've never been able to get a handle on how much space restore points add to C:. I'm sure that when you have several of them the space is not insignificant. I used to keep my images down to a minmum of 4.7g (Dvd size), but have allowed them to get somewhat larger now that inexpensive, high-capacity external drives are available.

 

I love Acronis too - it's the first thing I install after the OS and immediately mirror the fresh install. Then I make a few progressive mirrors as chipset, drivers, apps and periferals are added. Makes it very easy to roll back to near pristine points whenever the urge for a total games makeover, or major component upgrade strikes.

Great minds! With every purchase of a new computer (desktop or laptop), I go through a somewhat tedious, but worthwhile, process. First, I remove all bloatware, do some basic desktop customizing, add Acronis TrueImage to C: and then disable things like Windows auto-update and even (usually) the firewall. Then I create a backup image called the Base backup. Then I partition the drive adding a D: and sometimes an E: extended/logical drive and add basic utilities to C: such as Virtual Drive, MS Office and do a little more customizing. Then I do another backup which is the Core backup. After that, anytime I make any major changes, I create an updated Core backup. Programs and Games that take up a lot of space will be installed to the D: drive. Backup images will also be saved to the D: drive.

This means that at any time, I can return to one of several previous C: drive setups as you mention. The fact is that installing even one program can sometimes take several minutes and may involve a customized installation which takes even longer. If people don't make these sort of image backups and their hard drive crashed, they will lose hours of time and will have to try to remember what they installed and what customizations they made. Over the years, I've had 3 major hard disk disasters and have recovered from each one with minimal hassle. (Full disclosure: On one occasion I did pay a company $800 to recover data from a huge Drive D on my main desktop that had crashed, taking with it audio & video files I had done a lot of work on over a few weeks and DID NOT BACKUP- You dum-dum!

Originally Posted By Fnord (7 JUN 2012 9:43am)

On a related note, don't use Ad-Aware to remove your spy/adware. They have apparently been purchased by a big adware company:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/11/lavasoft_has_new_owners/

Fnord, thanks for the warning. I've had Ad-Aware on my system for a few years, but haven't used it in some time. I keep getting a pop-up from Lavasoft to upgrade. I'm going to delete it forthwith.

Originally Posted By SirDave (7 JUN 2012 11:08pm)

Originally Posted By tincup2 (4 JUN 2012 2:45pm)

Then I partition the drive adding a D: and sometimes an E: extended/logical drive and add basic utilities to C: such as Virtual Drive, MS Office and do a little more customizing. 

 

That's the ticket. Lean/mean C: and games/data D+. I reserve E for virtual drives and set the physical CDR to F or G. Mounting iso's of 'retro' games can get fussy if a) there is a physical drive with a lower letter than the virtural drive you are mounting it in, and b) drive letters higher that about G. But I digress... 

 

Back on topic, how about Spybot? I haven't used it for a while but techies used to recommend it as a strong tool to weed out malware and suspicious stuff. Anyone use/still use it?

 

Last edited by tincup2 : 9 JUN 2012 10:27pm