RealGM

I had five nephews and nieces visiting for a week and one of them downloaded some nasty rootkit that highjacked Google searches and kept turning off Windows firewall after every start and often freezing up the entire system.

Well Norton 20009 AV never detected it, so I fired them! Next I tried a bunch others like Windows defender, Malwarebytes, MicroTrends, etc., etc., etc. None of them detected the thing.

Finally I tried Avast! and finally a program that detected two suspicious files in the system32 folder and detected the rootkit when I started Firefox. Problem fixed after days of fiddling with other programs.

If I were you I'd format the drive and re-install the OS. That's the only way to be sure there's no rootkit still in your system.

yeah avast is quite good, I cleaned a laptop recently that was overcome by all manner of viruses despite having Norton installed. I don't really think highly of Norton because I see so many systems that are compromised with Norton antivirus.

I use Spybot -Search and Destroy. It scans everywhere and has picked up on things that Avast didnt get.
SuperAntiSpyware is another free program that has worked wonders for me (im VERY good with computers, so the family comes to me with all their CPU Issues!)

<-- Virus free since '03

Using: nothing

NAV is a joke. I actually have many friends that work at symantec, and live just down the street from the office. The place is freakin huge, built from bricks, mortar and good old fashioned American fear.

If you train your friends and family to realize that 99.999% of all viruses come from actually clicking a malicious link or installing an evil program, they will learn to be smarter internet surfers. It starts and ends with the user, and practically no one is an innocent bystander when their system becomes infected.

I repeat: Norton Anti Virus is a complete joke and takes up more system resources than it protects.

Spybot S&D, AdAware, and HiJack This! are great programs to run if you do have the occasional slip up

But remember kids:

Only YOU can prevent computer viruses

all anti viruses are the same. norton might not detect some viruses but it applies to AVast as well. that means, no such security tool is perfect. the best thing to do is, when you see a suspicious process running on your windows and cant b detected by your antivirus, try to scan it with another antivirus. i worked with an antivirus software 5 years ago and its like a 2 years of hell to me.

garrick wrote:yeah avast is quite good, I cleaned a laptop recently that was overcome by all manner of viruses despite having Norton installed. I don't really think highly of Norton because I see so many systems that are compromised with Norton antivirus.

--- In my experience Norton is also a CPU hog. Avast is one i run, also AVG free