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[dosraider]

There are several possible doom scenarios that can hurt/crash your beloved PC.
One of them is a nasty virus infection.

Luckily there are avir companies who offer solutions.
Bootable CD-USB rescue avir softs, freeware, complete and good working.
Good is that you don't have to be an expert to use them things when things screw up for you.

It's kinda handy to have them things in your drawer when the shit hits the fan. So, prepare yourself in the hope you'll never need those things, better safe then sorry etcetera etcetera blah blah ....

If you haven't yet, get to work and download/install the stuff peeps!!

Some nice ones:
http://www.avg.com/us-en/avg-rescue-cd
http://support.kaspersky.com/viruses/rescuedisk
http://www.f-secure.com/en/web/labs_...oval/rescue-cd

Come on, what you waiting for ? Ksss kssss get on it!!

[TotalAnarchy]

The most extreme thing that happened to me regarding viruses lately is also related to USB Flash. At the university, I went to the first floor to print some stuff.

Everything was fine - got my "toilet paper" and my stick back, but when I went home and inserted the USB in my PC - it was there, and you didn't even have to look hard, you could tell by the fake jpeg named "sexy" and the fake video titled "porn". As soon as it autoplayed, the virus activated and started to download crap from the internet and corrupt my existing files. Antivirus detected a couple of thousands of infections.

My PC is clean now, but the legacy of that virus lives on, as I am still unable to fix the Internet Connection, along other smaller system problems. Good thing I had another XP installed on the same PC...

[dosraider]

Originally Posted by TotalAnarchy

..... As soon as it autoplayed, the virus activated and started to download crap from the internet and corrupt my existing files. ....

Autoplay is TeH eViL !!!! Should be disabled by default, not the other way around.

Also: scan removable devices option, a must! (Even if it slows down...)

Ah well, with a bit of luck you have enough pr0n links now to last a while ... LMAO.


... as if anyone believes you got that pr0n file by 'accident' .... yeah, sure .....

[Smiling Spectre]

Originally Posted by TotalAnarchy

My PC is clean now, but the legacy of that virus lives on, as I am still unable to fix the Internet Connection, along other smaller system problems. Good thing I had another XP installed on the same PC...

Try to reinstall XP. It usually clears all this missing/broken system files for me. There is option for it, if you are loading from CD, and installer can found already installed Windows.

Also, I am using Dr.Web for purposes of resident antivirus and clearing. Successfully. Last 12 years. Fortunately, in Russia some computer magazines offer month-length "free" keys, and fortunately, my office subscribed to one such magazine.

And if you don't want to use it on 24/7 basis, there is option "Free cure" on main page that will give you full stand-alone scanner CureIt! as exe file or rescue CD.

[arete]

Originally Posted by Smiling Spectre

And if you don't want to use it on 24/7 basis, there is option "Free cure" on main page that will give you full stand-alone scanner CureIt! as exe file or rescue CD.

Spasibo!

[KrazeeXXL]

well, rescue cds are somewhat ok but they have one major flaw:

up-to-dateness

I won't rely on them but ofc it's always good to have one or two lying around

Originally Posted by Smiling Spectre

Try to reinstall XP. It usually clears all this missing/broken system files for me.

that's usually the way to go but since it's usually the way to go, some nasty ppl made workarounds to annul this.

Keyword: rootkits.

They can hide very good and you might even have them on your PC after a complete reinstallation of Windows.

A pretty good tool to detect and remove rootkits:

http://www.gmer.net/


Another big threat are facebook viruses. Altough mostly kinda old you have many ppl who:



and that shit spreads faster then neutrinos @CERN. The last one I got was pretty interesting. It linked to an jpg but I didn't see anything in the preview@fb. I put the actual scr (haha) in a sandbox and uploaded it to virustotal to let it check from the 40+ scanners there. And it turned out to be something really ugly. (a rly nice keylogger)

If you've got a file upto the size of 20 MB and don't know if it's secure to use, I suggest virustotal.com to you. It's one of my favourite sites on the internets.

But then again even with 40+ scanners you can't be sure to a hundred percent. The most crucial thing is about to be up-to-date. When you've got a new kinda virus (in a secure environment) then Virustotal is a good way to figure out which of the many AV's are the very best and fastest.

Originally Posted by dosraider

Autoplay is TeH eViL !!!!

truer words were never spoken. I'm still surprised how many ppl have autplay activated. I mean this is known since Win95A

Here a very good tool I use for many many years now. There you also can disable autoplay with a single click.

http://xp-antispy.org/en/ (works for Vista and 7 as well)

well there are so much more things you should take a look at if you won't ever come in need to use one of those (pesky) rescue cds

but most important thing is: up-to-dateness. There's a reason for the monthly patch-day. And it's interesting to see how many ppl don't even know neither care about it. But when I take a look at the statistics that most of the botnets with some of the largest amount of pc's are in my country - I'm not surprised at all...

but srsly, it sux when ppl don't care about security because their carelessness can affect you and others. But this creates lots of jobs on the other side, too.