Virus Removal Tool

webroot antivirus with antispyware much better and last longer

kaspersky

not that free avg crap

get kaspersky 2010
second best personal firewall goin .. good stuff

I use Avira, and I’ve also used AVG and liked it, too. I also have Ad-Aware downloaded and installed, and run it once a week.

When I used Norton I really liked it. Do me a favor though and don’t get Defender Pro. The firewall on it won’t allow me to use the internet at all…

You need anti-virus protection with real-time protection (shields). One that is up to date and able to receive virus definitions every day. Here is where you can read about the best commercial anti-virus programs: http://anti-virus-software-review.toptenreviews.com/ . As you can see on this site BitDefender Antivirus 2009, Kaspkersy Anti-Virus 2009, and Webroot Antivirus are the top three. You should have only one anti-virus program installed on your computer. Because anti-virus programs have real time protection more than one can cause conflicts and not work as well. And you must have one to protect your computer at all times. You can safely use online virus scanners to supplement your main anti-virus program. Here is a link for some free online scanners:
http://www.johannrain-softwareentwicklung.de/e_online_antivirus_scan.htm

If you cannot afford to pay for an anti-virus protection then you should get one of the free anti-virus software available. They are not as good as the commercial ones but still can do a good job and are very necessary. You can read about the free ones here: http://www.techsupportalert.com/pc/security-tools.html . Look under “ Best Free Antivirus Software.”

But anti-virus protection is not enough. You also need anti-spyware protection that has real time protection. One of the top rated commercial ones is Webroot Spy Sweeper. Two of the best free spyware scanners are Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware and SUPERAntiSpyware. These will not have real time protection that commercial ones do. But you would use them to scan. You should use at least 2 free ones that do not have the real time protection. If you have a commercial anti-spyware program you can still use a couple free ones without real time protection to supplement. You can find free anti-spyware programs on the same link as above but look under “Best Free Adware/Spyware/Scumware Remover.” On the same link you can look into free trojan scanners too. The best commercial one is Trojan Hunter.

An important point: Once your computer is clean and working normally just to be on the safe side turn off system restore and wait 30 seconds, turn it back on and create a new restore point. This way it gets rid of anything bad that might have gotten saved in a restore point and you have a clean restore point to use in the near future if needed. Do not turn it off until your computer is clean and working normally because you might need to use it if something goes wrong during the clean-up process. It is better to go back to an infected restore point if something goes wrong then to not be able to undo changes that were damaging. You can also scan again.

Here is an excellent article to learn how to be safe on the internet, http://surfthenetsafely.com/index.html . It covers everything from viruses, spyware, and firewalls in great detail. The links in it that do not work right are pointing to the link I gave above from techsupportalert.com ( or gizmo’s freeware). So just use the one above. This is also a good article to read from techsupportalert.com: http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/spyware-removal-guide.htm .

Be sure to also scan any external hard drive, flash drive, USB storage device that you use as well. I have even heard that iPods can be infected so be sure to scan those too.

One last important note. Often free security programs have to be manually updated while the commercial ones have automatic updates. It is vital that you keep your security programs up to date with the latest malware definitions or they will be useless.