Antivirus 2009 Virus warning

[UncleChris]

I've seen some very good reviews for Vipre 2009 virus software. Anyone know for sure on this one????

 

[Sandan]

One simple step you can take when you install to make recovery easier is to partition your drive.

Create a 80gb partition for the C drive and partition the rest as say E:

The after install move "My Documents" to E: [properties r click on my doc icon].

Then if you have to wipe and reinstall all your files [minus bookmarks etc are preserved. The you can use E for all your data

 

[AZZenny]

And here's the skinny on your attacker, folks: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/technology/internet/23worm.html?em

 

[Russ Smith]

Ok.... Throw rocks at me if you like for the old dead horse....

If you regularly back up your hard drive on another hard drive, you virtually eliminate these kinds of problems. I run (and have for years) a second hard drive in my system that is used solely and only for full-drive backup, which I do at least once a week. The worst that can happen even with a catastrophic failure is one week of lost data.

Just sayin', ya know????

Does having 2 separate drives really protect you? I had 2 separate drives and both got infected but maybe that's because the system wasn't set up correctly?

 

[conraddobler]

Does having 2 separate drives really protect you? I had 2 separate drives and both got infected but maybe that's because the system wasn't set up correctly?

Depends on how the virus works actually.

Partitioning your drive is still a good idea but it wouldn't stop everything, some viruses are worse than others and hop drives or alter the registry, pretty much if it's in your computer it can be infected but again some don't work the same way.

 

[UncleChris]

Does having 2 separate drives really protect you? I had 2 separate drives and both got infected but maybe that's because the system wasn't set up correctly?

If you use the 2nd drive to real-time mirror the first drive, then no... the 2nd drive won't save you. If you use the 2nd drive solely to run a backup program once a week or so, as long as you hvaen't backed up the virus, too, you are much safter (plus, just plain hard drive crashes are taken care of by backing up the primary drive.

 

[Sandan]

Russ, the reason I was suggesting partitioning wasn't for backups.

It was so all your operating system files are on you C partition and all you data [and you can move My Documents] is on the second partion.

That way when you get infected and the registry is buggered, you can reformat the C partition and reinstall the OS there and none of your data on [probably E:] is affected.

You may still have the files for the virus on the E drive but with a reinstalled OS, a AV scanner should find them from a clean OS. Most virus need to get into the OS/registry. Thats why Vista is more secure, its harder to install stuff acidently.

 

[Ryanwb]

I got this antivirus popup on my Linux machine, it said I had trojans and it listed files for internet explorer. Total scam

 

[Russ Smith]

Russ, the reason I was suggesting partitioning wasn't for backups.

It was so all your operating system files are on you C partition and all you data [and you can move My Documents] is on the second partion.

That way when you get infected and the registry is buggered, you can reformat the C partition and reinstall the OS there and none of your data on [probably E:] is affected.

You may still have the files for the virus on the E drive but with a reinstalled OS, a AV scanner should find them from a clean OS. Most virus need to get into the OS/registry. Thats why Vista is more secure, its harder to install stuff acidently.

Interesting.

I wound up reformatting both drives and I now have an external drive too that I can backup data like pics on so I won't lose anything but I'll have to consider what you're suggesting too.

 

[Sandan]

Just had to rebuild myself.

Not a virus but a corrupted driver, major PIA as I have a real old version of XP.

If you try it you MUST recreate the exact same username in the reinistall