Life without anti-virus ?

I hesitate to add another opinion. But I will.

The op is talking about multiple different problems and may not have had a virus problem.

Heres my take:

1. You need to be able to recover quickly whatever causes the fault. So some approach to copying your disk image and keeping a library of them so that when a problem occurs you can recover instantly is good.

2. You don't want viruses, trojans, spyware on your machine so you really should run virus software even if (like me) you turn the live monitoring off during trading to minimize disruption.

3. You need a firewall preferably better than winxp's standard fw.

1. Will recover from a virus, a stuff up or a dead disk. 2 Protects you from losing financial info and simple problems for MOST viruses (sure u might get one that ur software can't detext). 3. Is the other bit.

None of it costs money.

1. Use Macrium reflect and save the disk images on a detached USB disk drive or/and dvds. USB disk drives are now cheap all the way up to 1 terabyte.

2. The fastest cleanest least complained about free virus protection is not AVG, its Avira so change.

3. I'd support the user who suggested Comodo firewall. Its very good although it does ask a few more questions than u like when you are changing stuff.

I turn the virus stuff off during the trading day because I don't browse uncertain sites or download stuff/mail while trading but leave it on elsewise. It does detect the odd thing.
 
i've used computers since the 80s and didn't use an anti-virus for my own computers until around 2001, and my personal machines have never been infected. at my previous jobs is another matter. we were required to run anti-virus software but that didn't prevent some people's machines from being infected.

what this should tell you is that nothing replaces personal vigilance and net-awareness.

a firewall is very useful. for savvy users, comodo is excellent but for the average person, like grandma, it's way way too complex. for those people, zone alarm is better.
 
I got a very weird message from the firewall the day I started this thread or posted a reply , something about :

msgup810_421_usb.exe trying to act as a server

I don't know what this sh*t is I looked up on Google there is not
much . I guarantee it's teh first time I saw it.

Now I am mentioning this because the day my laptop died was also the very day I posted on ET mentioning that I had never updated anything on that laptop and loved it.

Quite a coincidence . I never get anything, but the very days I brag about it on here, the sky falls on my head. So this is probably a stupid question to those with advanced knowledge of security isssues but would it be possible that I would have been the target of an attack from something or someone monitoring on this website ?
 
Kicking as mentioned here before. you should be surfing with Firefox ( I prefer K-meleon) but must have 'allow cookies' turned off. Turn it back on when need to post on this or other sites. I suspect most or all microsofts bullshit services are open in your system.
 
Quote from Kicking:

I got a very weird message from the firewall the day I started this thread or posted a reply , something about :

msgup810_421_usb.exe trying to act as a server

I don't know what this sh*t is I looked up on Google there is not
much . I guarantee it's teh first time I saw it.

Now I am mentioning this because the day my laptop died was also the very day I posted on ET mentioning that I had never updated anything on that laptop and loved it.

Quite a coincidence . I never get anything, but the very days I brag about it on here, the sky falls on my head. So this is probably a stupid question to those with advanced knowledge of security isssues but would it be possible that I would have been the target of an attack from something or someone monitoring on this website ?
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I'm pretty sure your system is compromised.

If it is: Don't try to "clean" it.
Do a clean re-format and re-install.

I recommend Vista x64. XP32 is too vulnerable.

Check out VirtualPC for creating a virtual machine.
 
Quote from den999:

I've run multiple machines without anti-virus but with a strong firewall for years. No virus problems! It is really not hard to avoid download viruses unless you are an idiot.
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Agree, although I absent mindedly downloaded a bogus Active X request a few months back that took me a few hours to clean out of registry. But that's been the extent of trouble in the 3-4 years since I canned Norton.

IMO AV is like the false comfort of an index circuit breaker. You d/l shit you shouldn't under the guise of, "I'm protected." What I used to find though was Norton's and McAfee etal were always one step behind the new virus curve anyways. Safer just to self regulate your d/l and surfing habits...
 
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