I know a numbe of your have contacted me and chris - and probably aussie too lol
Had a furtle and I can log into ratmans account no problem so hopefully he should be able to as well :-)
no more messages necessary.

what happened?

Ah well - unfortunately it's not a forum related problem.
Had a chat with him last night and in my professional opinion (and after 20 years that's not to be sneezed at) he's picked up a nasty trojan/virus. basically it's blocking .org websites - among other things.
couldn't even get the remote client to run. Another indication that a virus is blocking programs and sites that might help remove it.

On top of that, his computer appears to have a dodgy psu. Or overheating cpu/motherboard.

All of these things I could sort fairly quickly - if he wasn't about 5'000 miles away.

I'll give him a ring later today and see if he's managed to get the remote client running.

Moral of this tale children is DO NOT USE NORTON ANTIVIRUS !
It's about as much use as licorice laces for sling cords.

Curious Aardvark wrote on Nov 15^th, 2009 at 8:11am:

Moral of this tale children is DO NOT USE NORTON ANTIVIRUS ! It's about as much use as licorice laces for sling cords.

hey...that's a good idea.

ah well, my anti virus is dead anyways.

check out my new sticky at the top of the admin section.

no excuse for not having protection ;-)

I installed the avg and it has already payed off.Thanks.

OK ratman sent me an email via youtube (of all places)

I used Norton until about a year ago and then switched to Avast! Antivirus. Whatever's free. I don't open suspect emails and *usually* avoid bad websites. They're getting good at hiding viruses now!

avast isn't bad - but it will slow your computer down and it's not quite as good as avg.

The best thing to use is malwarebytes.
If that finds anything, it's time to change antivirus to avg :-)

I use a couple of programs listed here. Any good?
http://www.instructables.com/id/Several-Easy-Steps-to-Secure-Your-Computer/

Curious Aardvark wrote on Nov 16^th, 2009 at 7:46am:

avast isn't bad - but it will slow your computer down and it's not quite as good as avg. The best thing to use is malwarebytes. If that finds anything, it's time to change antivirus to avg :-)

malwarebytes found 5 kinds of adware. durn it.

lol try a spybot scan probably find a few more - but can take a very long time to do a scan, last time I looked (monday) spybot was checking for over 770,000 different bits of malware.

Like I say avast isn't bad - but no single program can catch everything anymore.

I used to be a devotee of the sygate/AVG/Adaware combo but now AVG has turned useless (and a bit evil) I swear by Comodo. Spybot SD and Adaware etc still have their place but they report zero issues since I turned to Comodo.

Sensible habits help too... don't click thru on dodgy porn links, wallpapers, ringtones or bother looking at stupid email attachments from coworkers and rellos.

Use your computer how you drive your car... try to avoid parking in crimeland for any length of time and don't give lifts to strangers. Don't lend it to numbnuts and don't leave the windows down.

Quote:

but now AVG has turned useless (and a bit evil)

and then you woke up yes ?
comodo is okay - not great for some of the more insidious malware.
And completely useless for cleaning up a system infected with tdss or similiar rootkits.

Avg 9 free version is the best on-all-the-time antivirus. not perfect, but better than the rest.
won't slow your computer down and will catch most things.

best rootkit cleaner is simply trojan remover, follow that with malwarebytes and an avg 9 scan and you can clean 99.9 % of systems. for anything else you need experience and manual removal skills :-)

I do this for a living and in 20 years I've never not cleaned a virus from a system. I do know what I'm talking about.