How many viruses have you had?

Curio

Curio

Curio

Soldato
Joined
14 Mar 2004
Posts
8,040
Location
Brit in the USA
After going, like, 17 years using PC's and not having a virus worth mentioning (some silly little ones that didn't actually do anything...) I've now had 2 serious infections within with space of 3 months :( Despite being absolutely meticulous with my security and cleanliness and not changing my surfing/downloading habits at all.

The first one the missus managed to contract via P2P and it was nasty - it basically destroyed all the .exe files on her machine, one by one, and she had to re-install. AVG tried its best, but the virus was so rampant it nuked everything even while it was trying to sort it out! It jumped over the network to mine, but fortunately I downloaded a little utility to kill it before it ate anything vital!

Then yesterday I'm happily surfing away when suddenly, out of nowhere, a whole bunch of pop-ups appear and Windows hangs. I reboot and Windows is dead. After doing a repair installation I get it working again and this time AVG picks up a virus in a Windows system file. I move it to the vault and then IExplorer wouldn't work. All the time I'm trying to fix it I'm getting pop-ups opening and discover a whole bunch of adware has been installed :mad: I eventually find a clean version of the system file to download and this fixes the problem. But of course it had now made its way onto the wife's PC....so we have to go through it all again :rolleyes: Fortunately, her AVG caught it straight away and it wasn't too bad.

Am I just going through an unlucky patch, or are things getting worse?
 
Ive had to format 3 times this year due to the destructive buggers. This is what happens when you have a "Family" computer :mad:

I have viruses and spyware and i cant find them or get rid of them. Ive removed over 30 in about a week and there still seems to be some on here. My windows installer is messed up and the computer hangs all the time and im going to need to format it again. Im just covering up the problem by using firefox and the least effected programs
These ones came in because just for 1 weekend i let a friend use the computer :mad:

Oh if its any help get rid of AVG and get a real program. AVG is like a bullet proof vest trying to stop a Missile, its just not gonna work.

Saying this i gotta get rid of damm nortan :p
 
In the 90s loads, most of the notorious one's thanks to sharing 'stuff' with friends. One managed to destroy Dad's work when it was due :(

Last 5-years nothing serious, just the usual non-destructive spyware/malware. BUT with any infection I've found that even a clean reinstall might not solve the problem. Trick is to get into safe mode & run any & all virus removers/cleaners, etc. If can't get into Safe Mode, pop ‘sick’ HD into PC that is up-to-date (i.e. AV) & scan several times before & after formatting it ;)
 
sometimes you can end up with the virus being stuck in the boot sector of the hd, the only way to rid it is to do a low level format of your hd
 
At work, the day i started, had a big virus outbreak, but the anti virus and company policies were shocking. not had one since in the last 5 years! The chances of getting any by email are now 0%, guaranteed :)

at home, none either.
 
I haven't had any since I ditched NOD32. A trojan got past it so I moved to Avast and that nuked it immediately. Since then I haven't had a single problem, I have had a few alerts though but Avast has always done its job and prevented any infection. :)
 
I've had one and that's due to P2P. AVG picked it up and removed it no problem.

The only other major virus I've had was Blaster and that was in the initial infections before anyone knew what was going on. I didn't have any anti-virus at that point.
 
Broadbandplacey said:
a couple of biggies several years ago

haven't had the slightest sniff of anything since i switched to OS X 2 years ago - funny that ;)
Click to expand...
I must qualify that I only use WIndows at work, at home I also use a wonderfully virus and spyware free Mac. My intention is to (slowly unfortunately) change my office to Mac in due course. :)
 
AVG is shoddy at removing viruses, no idea why it gets such a good rep.

Anyway, haven't had any since getting NOD32 over AVG :)
 
I had one before i heard of things like firewalls and antivirus, but on my new pc, absolutely zero, just the odd bit of spyware (which consisted of tracking cookies and that was it).
 
None and I've got 3 (had 4) pc's. I don't use AV's, or firewalls either, although I did use Nod32 for a good few months although it never picked anything up.

I just avoid IE/OEx, keep a watch on my registry and use common sense when browsing.

The last virus I had was back in '92 on my Atari ST.
 
Today Kaspersky immedietly detected a Trojan I accedently downloaded. I was downloading a program from the net, but I didn't know it was coupled with a nasty. As soon as Firefox said "Download Complete", emergency measures, red elert Star Trek style Kaspersky immediately told me it had detected
"Trojan-Dropper.Win32.VB.lu"

I love Kaspersky :D
 
I suppose I've had about 5 viruses in about 4 years of computing, and Nortons Antivirus picked up and stopped all 5 from running, so I can't knock Nortons. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom