Quality of Virus Scanners

I had a hard time re-finding the passage! So now I can wade thru some replies.

Link: The Thread was "Disturbing Windows & Software Problems." Post date: 1-13-15

My use is personal as opposed to business. Websites, in addition to CR4, are generally hobby related (antique fire apparatus,) high school alumni assn (not much activity,) fast nuclear reactors, and such. No games at all.

Users are myself and my wife. No kids since they are grown.

It could be the non-thermal neutrons are zapping your core memory on the mother board, and presenting as if there was a nefarious virus.

Best advice: steer clear of any websites (or blog responses) that mention midgets on a bus.

I have been a Mac user, and since they went to unix in 2006 there have been few problems. I don't even have a virus software installed on any of my three computers. A friend did however recently get one after his daughter was using it for something, it was easy to get rid of, just had to dump the browser cache with the web unplugged (it would reload using the Mac's restart with applications box checked). But I understand the need for Windows, cheaper, more software especially for engineering and manufacturing. What I don't understand is why Windows must get viruses to begin with, and so easily. I know Flash is a big vector (on my Mac's it makes the cooling fans screem!) but why is Windows so easily damaged? Is it a conspiracy? The NSA? Are there settings on Windows that should be turned off except when only necessary that allow it to get infected? I have Flash turned off on my Mac and some web sites(new york times and other news sites) don't work properly.

Windows gets infected because Bill didn't/doesn't care.

A billion dollar industry has bloomed thanks to no forethought and no concern for the user.

Microsoft software never really gets improved, it just gets shuffled so that nothing that the user knows how to find is available until they spend minutes, or hours, trying to get back to where they were yesterday, when they were $300>00 USD richer.

8.1 is a prime example. Useless compared to former versions.

Thanks Bill.

And here I was thinking that the Windows OS was so much more popular than the Mac OS that few bothered creating viruses for it.

That's changing now and even Mac users need virus protection as some recent web-reported incidents have illustrated. Yah progress.

Given two choices, firing squad (Windows OS) and hanging (any other operating system, I'd guess that the firing squad (Windows OS) is more popular. At least it's a quick end.

Forced obsolescence, and being the first on the block, is the key to the Windows OS "popularity".

Gates has enough money now to create a world wide demand for his OS by giving money away.

The time has come when we won't be able to "buy" OS. We'll have to rent them.

Windows 365 costs $99.00 USD, but, it's in the cloud, not ON your PC.

Nothing will keep them from charging you more for the privilege of using their product. As in a monthly fee. "The cloud" will hold all the real software.

You'll have to have Bill's blessing to use it. Don't pay the fee and you lose it all cause you have nothing on your PC.

Sound bitter, I am!

G'day Lyn, simply AMEN to that.

Rod

Hi,

I get really mad every time I think about what Bill Gates has done in order to try and make more and more money for no added value to his product.

Cheers

I know. But the culture is engrained.

And I'll bet he still gets a good deal of the profits.

At least B.G. is not making your next car, or mine either. I cannot imagine having to defrag the car every time I fire it up, warm it up for about 2-3 more hours, and also not go where either I want or need to go, because it could be (not confirmed) a bad neighborhood. Sometimes the best tacos are in the bad neighborhoods. Oh well.

Not to mention the crash into a light pole every time you make a block.

I wonder, did BG help design the Cavalier?

Do you use Windoze at all?

In a slight defence of Microsoft (heck someone's got to say something positive), I don't know what people are complaining SO much about with Win8, I just disabled all the Win8 tablet specific features (which you can do) and ignored them so my computer essentially looks and runs like previous versions of Windows.

Yes they tried to push the tablet format to help drive the market that way and this particular time they failed, but don't forget you can turn the tablet features off. Yes it could be designed better, yes they could have spent more time getting it right, yes they could have listened to customer feedback and given us more of what we wanted and fixed more of the problems we had with previous OSs.

Yes Win8 joins a long line of poor OS in our opinions, but there are alternatives for those that wish them and ways of getting around the problems.

The cloud is a bigger issue, and I hate Office 2010 (what a turd to use).

Funnily enough, I had to buy Office 2010 for a translation job I was doing in 2012 or -13. Steep learning curve over a week or so, then its really good.....I still prefer it. Its on my W7 Laptop. Like it!! I use the Ultra version....

On my Ubuntu Laptop, there is Office Libre. It drove me crazy till I found out that the Calc program screws up simple maths....the same sheets, transferred to the W7 laptop were calculated perfectly.....I spent hours, maybe days, trying to find why the sheets were wrongly calculated.....what a waste of time....

I alerted Office Libre by email. Nothing happened.

I wonder how many people are using it and think that the math is good!!!Awful......there own fault, I check ALL my formula myself!! Always!!

As usual GIGO. Good on you for checking and finding the problem. I will steer clear of Office Libre.

That's interesting. I've used Openoffice and Libreoffice on Debian for years with no problem. I don't particularly like it, but it does handle MS Office files better than any other I've tried.

I would be interested in seeing the formulas it was mucking up just in case I am doing anything similar and missing it.

Cheers

It does not add up correctly when using SUM adding up columns of decimal numbers.....but the exact same sheets using 2010 Excel were added up perfectly.....

I gave up looking further for problems with Libre Calc, I use only Excel now. One failure was enough for me....

I used it under Ubuntu, not windows.

I've done that as best as I can, but there's not much that resembles previous versions that were familiar to most users.

Back up your computer? No! is called something else and is not user friendly, or easy to find and use.

Cheesy apps instead of simple programs as in the past.

"there's an app for that and you will need to download it first"

Maybe it's just me.

The new OS took me a while to figure out and set up, that and I cheated and got an experienced Windows IT expert friend to set it up for me after I had a poke around finding little that was familiar to me. Get one of those, they are great on the nerves.

Cheesy apps instead of simple programs

That's the tablet side of the marketing.

I'm just a dinosaur, I admit it.

I got a new PC with Win 8.1 & one of the 1st things I did was to install Classic Shell which lets you choose a Win7 or WinXP user interface. Other than that I have to say that it starts quickly & runs solidly although I keep it clean with MalwareBytes, SpyBot, CCleaner & Tracks Eraser.

hanks, I'll give that a try.

Who is that Guy "Hank"?

Office 2010, just needs to be set up to show what YOU want.....you can make it look like earllier versions if you wish as well. Your choice......

What about "Flash" as a vector? I have it one of my Macs and use "Click to Flash" to keep it turned off. When I go to a site like Washington Post that requires it to access all of it my fans spin up, and the whole computer slows to a crawl! If I didn't know any better I would think I had a virus. I don't use my windows computers on the Web(leather net, air gap, Mastercam to CNC, just work) but might Flash on Explorer act the same way, like a virus when it was just hogging resources? Or can Flash actually let a virus jump on board? Sorry to seem dumb about this but sometimes it strikes me that we have all become totally dependent upon a product that is defective to such a degree that we wouldn't tolerate it in anything else!

If I remember correctly flash is a bit of a resource hog because it is expected to do so much.

Is your computer just slowing to a crawl because of a slow internet connection and trying to download and display a large amount of video data? I just checked the Washington Post site and it is rather video intensive (loading most of the front page and one news article was 8MB and that was even before loading any videos).

Flash needs updating regularly because it can be exploited (again if I remember correctly).

And for the most part, the problem is that you navigated directly to the Washington Post. Heck, my Windows 7 OS at home can't even hover over the local Lubbock Avalanche-Journal without a near lock-up, as newspapers in general are hacked on a daily basis, loaded with cookie flingers, phishing, and information spyders. It is like going to a public toilet and having a drink, if you catch the drift (hope you don't catch cold).

The newspapers and TV media appear to be behind the times and have arrived late to the online party. Hopefully in time their online web design will improve to match the rest of the online content in both efficient format, download speed, advertising and online user protection.

A well maintained and regularly cleaned toilet if you will.

All the Mac viruses since the original Mac are still together less than a few hundred(not an exact number, but just from hearsay), maybe less than a hundred. It's usually just a few per year. WinDos is in the millions now I think. Sandboxing, Code signing, Unix underpinnings, and having most of the "doors" locked by default help a lot. I get the feeling from WinDos that nobody cares, the doors are left all wide open and the user has to learn to crawl around in the dark and try to lock them one by one. If you are an engineer, software writer, or some other IT pro you know where to look for the problems. People like me who just want to get some useful work done in our field, design and machine a part, or find some information or a supplier, we are stuck. That's why I use both OS's, although if somebody wrote a great CAM program for the Mac that was as good as Mastercam my trash can would fill up pretty fast with the WinDos box.

GA

Good solid well thought out post, so thanks from me personally.

Don't you gents over in EU have that package called Eblue (or something like that)?

Have you tried CCleaner? WD-40?

Hard to believe? One only need look at the current piece of crap Microsoft has forced on the computing world to see junk in action. As soon as windoze 8 came out computer users roundly said it was junk! Where have you been?

They rushed out 8.1 to try to quell the storm of outrage over taking what was a reasonable poor system (W7) and forcing W8 on a public that didn't want it or NEED it.

They left no features intact or even usable without hours of needless wading through mindless instructions on how to find features that were formerly almost intuitive.

Touch screen?????? You're kidding me, right??? How arrogant of them.

The only good thing you say is W8 boots faster than previous versions. Unless you spend your day turning your machine off and on, the time saved on start-up is minuscule compared to the time spent using it. Really!!!

If W8 is so good, why are they rushing a new "improved" software version (W10) out and GIVING IT AWAY to all the poor slobs who were forced to buy the odoriferous W8.?

Your arrogance and disdain of those who just want a simple operating system is typical of those who claim to be experts. You write code. So what? I don't.

Your last statement proves my point eloquently. You wrote the code, so it must be perfect!

Congratulations. You have gained the "Andy" seal of approval. A dubious distinction in my world, maybe not yours.

Cheers!

I have to laugh, you TOO have also gained the "Andy" seal of approval with this post of yours, so you are both in the same boat!!!

I personally use only W7 and Ubuntu Desktop on my Laptops for the same reasons....never used any form of W8.

I always said I would not go to W8 or higher, but even though Ubuntu has some great features I would love to see added to Windows, it still is not a good as many say. I get updates almost daily....

Good points are that most software is free, bad point is that there is not the wide range of choice that Windoze has, also some of the free software is simply awful, just as you might expect!!

Furthermore, if you think about it, on average, there HAD to be someone around here that likes 8.x!!! Don*t blame him for it in any way.....

Like I actually know people who liked and still use Vista!!! I remember that after 5 minutes, I took it off my laptop!! (well it might have been 10 minutes!!!) Simply awful.....I took a LONG time to go to Win7 even......from XP of course!!

I may goto W10 as well eventually, who knows!! But unless some major good changes happen to Ubuntu, I will be leaving it....

Normal statistical distribution says population not equal to zero.

Wife uses Ubuntu, and it "cured" her Windows 8.1 ills.

I hear that when W10 becomes available (later this year, maybe even mid-summer?), it will be a free upgrade for those who already have W7 or W8.1 (but not W8); and remain free for the life of that computer. Therefore, you should upgrade to W7 or W8.1 before the release so you will be eligible. Also, if you are thinking of a new computer, get it now so the lifetime will be longer.

Also that W10 will be the end of the line; it will be continually upgraded, not an option, instead of additional WXXs. (Could this imply that it will be in the "Cloud" with an annual fee? I have nothing there yet, so this could get awkward.)

I read many positive technical reviews about Win8 - many shared my personal dislike of Metro but there were other sentiments that were positive. Informed reviews are often balanced whereas rants and raves are not, anyone can make an extreme argument picking from online rants of mixed quality.

The first thing I did when I installed Win8 was to turn off all unnecessary screen animations and their ilk and I find it very fast. By the time you have done that the only real issue in my opinion is its harder to find programs without the start button. I was also pleased to find that some legacy software I find useful now runs correctly on win8, previously it had stopped working in win7 due to changes MS had made in the way that screen refresh was handled.

I hope your ability to read manuals is better than your ability to read forum postings as I mentioned several positive things about win8 and also about dot Net - you quote me as only saying one thing - sorry but a computer professional cant help noticing when someone says 1 == 3.

The argument of taking something someone else has said and then taking to an extreme is a very poor excuse for a reasoned response - I am reasonably confident that you are the only person on this thread who thinks I turn my laptop on and off all the time.

If you dont like win8 why dont you offer constructive criticism rather than go into a rant and rave that says nothing of value other than telling the rest of us that you are p*****d off? Make suggestions or do something worthwhile but seriously what does your rant achieve, you offer very little in the way of concrete constructive details.

If I appear arrogant to you thats your opinion, the word I would use is informed but there is much confusion these days over those two words.

Quote: "First of all, I don't know what the he** metro is, and don't really care, but based on your statement, no one likes it. Is that what you meant to say"

You have invented something that was never said by me - I did not say no-one likes Metro.

Metro is not a term restricted to nerds or a clique - it is a very widespread and commonly used term.

I do not agree that windows 8.0 is a bad tool - I have only one major criticism and thats the disapearance of the start menu buttton for easy access of programmes.

I do not mind constructive criticism, just dont see the point of a generalised rant that includes precious little specifics, and certainly does not help someone trying to decide whether they should upgrade, they need to see reasoned pros and cons not a personalised attack on Bill Gates.

I am simply reacting against what I see is the current trend - tabloidism - highly opinionated on the one hand but little concrete information presented to back it up, if you think that my opinion is elitist then that is your right.

GA

You are certainly entitled to your opinion. It carries no more, and no less, weight than any other opinion presented here. Andy may be the exception to that, in his own mind.

I assumed that the double negative comment pointed out by James Stewart was just a mis-statement on your part, something that would never happen when you are writing code or doing other important IT stuff, I hope.

IT is not my job or livelihood. I have always described myself as an appliance user and the superior attitude exhibited by some here, is taken with a grain of salt.

I'm happy that you're happy with Win 8.

I'm not.

Good luck.

We all as consumers expect perfection, but that perfection produced by human minds and hands is never going to be perfectly perfect. Usually the first kid on the block with the new bike, also has the fastest bike. That lasts about as long as it takes for kiddos to wear down their papas and mamas into buying them the new bike also.

That is why I still have my old Windows XP computer out in my shop with zero internet connection to it. (Inconvenient yes, but stable platform to run data logger, also a yes.). I can also use older version of Microsoft Office on the XP machine, get all my spreadsheets to produce graphs of data, design drawings (basic crude drawings, nothing set up for CNC work), and so I continue to work out there as though it were very early 20th Century, or maybe late 19th Century. At least I have electric power in my shop even when the local utility crashes, (as long as I can stand to pedal the bike).

That is why I am in the middle of a build on a small Tesla turbine (I am not good enough to build a scale model of LM6000 GE gas turbine). Once I have it up and running I can post if anyone interested in my crude ways. At least I finally learned how to run a lathe OK (even though my Taig cannot be slowed down enough for big steel, or really any steel over 1/2" diameter), and I can run a pipe thread tap now (after some of the worst crooked examples you ever saw). Humble is as humble does.

@James:

I used to work on software written for computer aided design used mainly in the automotive and aerospace industry.

Every single bug ever reported was captured in the form of a test, every single computer in the building occupied itself every night running those tests.

Any release of code that caused a test to regress was removed.

My wife is a userability expert - she spent her working life looking at workflow and interface design, this is all orientated to improving user experience, efficiency and comprehension, ensuring that interfaces are intuitive. This is not something that happens in a vaccuum, they go out and test the software with real users.

Most stuff that gets approved for adoption has to prove itself not just to a team of experts but also has to survive testing against real world scenarios.

Its not perfect but the people involved in these processes are trying to do a good job with conflicting requirements, users with differing levels of ability and requirements and so on.

To rubbish it as a load of disconnected geeks who patronise people who lack their level of expertise or to suggest that the people concerned commit willling vandalism to downgrade or somehow "unevolve" their product to a state inferior to its previous incarnation is just a mis-guided rant and rave.

I am accused of being an elitist but all I am saying is that many pieces of software are simply too complex to be understood by the lay person - its not elitist, its plain demonstratable fact, its no more elitist than to suggest that the layman cannot perform surgery - why do people think that whilst they admit to having no relevent knowledge that software is more transparent and a more appropriate target for their rant and rave?

Some people want to do complicated things like build a model and print it out on a 3D printer but they have no concept of the years of technical struggle required to get there and they throw their toys out of the pram when the new wonder tools dont do precisely as they expected.

The fundamental observation for me here is that what people actually want does not exist. They want tools that enable them to perform a complex task in times that would have seemed science fiction a couple of decades ago and yet they do not want to know about the complexity involved, what the tool really has to do they just want it to do it.

I wonder what would happen in times gone by if a traditional engineer approached his manual lathe in the same way - "dont show me the manual, I dont want to know about cutting speeds or tool geometries - forget about cutting oils or feed rates - I just want it to work the way I want it and NOW !!!"

The fundamental nature of tools has not really changed that much at all - the blagger who doesnt read the manual, doesnt take an interest and thinks it should all just magically work arrives at an inferior result - its always been the way and however much time is spent trying to make software bullet proof I think it will usually be more efficient for the user to take some level of interest in learning to use it well.

Reading the manual is one thing. Understanding it is a completely separate matter. Without proper training no one can be a machinist, without at least crashing the lathe a time or two, nor without overheating a cutting tool a few (hundred) times.

Maybe I read something in between the lines of what you initially posted. Heck, my work computer (this one) is still on XP, and IT keeps saying when we roll over to Outlook, you will not be able to run it. I keep saying, OK, where is my new desktop?

It will not matter in a few weeks. I am not going to bother to say why, but something big is brewing out there. Good luck, and see you on the other side.

Windows tries to be everything to everyone and work with (almost) every hardware and software variation while allowing easy modification to allow 3rd party software to integrate and alter the OS for its own means. Unfortunately this, and poor inefficient (read fast and cheap) coding results in more exploitable holes than <insert your own hole example here> and a system that does virtually everything, but not efficiently or well.

My old 6Mhz (ish) Amiga ran rings around the 286, 386 and even 486's of the day, and why - because of efficient coding.

There are other reasons in my opinion. Most people use Windows at work and home so who are you going to target if you want to steal bank account details, etc.

@Jack Of All Trades

"efficient coding" - sure good point, the days of assembler and working out which register to use to hold a value whilst doing something else. I did that too, even managed to write a whole game on Amiga in pure assembler.

Later on I worked on software used in the aerospace industry, also to design cars, we could not have written that code in assembler. Its not only a matter of time its also one of complexity - assembler does not (human read) and its a pain to debug, multithreaded large scale complex code in assembler - its easier and financially more viable just to add more cores on the chip !!!

Code gets re-used, is very expensive to produce. Modular code has to be bullet proof so it gets bloated as a defensive measures not only against inept users but in defense of inept software developers or hobbiests. Code has to be multifunctional, you cannot keep writing the same thing over and over so you do it once and open the bandwidth of its input and output. Legacy software is hard to alter or even to fix against bugs without upsetting a whole load or users who are now depending on the wrong result - just try telling a major car manufacturer that their 3D models for eventual CNC manufacture have broken because you have fixed a fault in the design software - they liked the wrong result and it looked right for them and it worked and is now in production BUT you want to break that model ( costing them millions ) because the code delivered a technically incorrect answer - thats why a lot of complex code has to be able to continue to deliver legacy results incorrectly but to produce new results correctly - guess how much that bloats the code - wanna try that in assembler???

The software industry is full of pretty bright people - the conspiracy theorists who suggest that they deliberately produce inferior results rarely understand the industry or the situation - no different to the common wisdom that medics dont know their game or that politicians are all dribbling idiots.

As someone who has written code before (including in assembly language <cringe>) code isn't much different to hardware. Try and do everything in a single product results in a product that doesn't do anything as well as a product designed to do a few things well. Add deadlines and budgets and something's got to give.

I thought AVG (free version) was good, until (about 6 years ago) it let a rootkit virus slip through, which looked like it had wrecked my PC. I bought Kaspersky (£35/year for 3 machines). It couldn't fix it on it's own, but a nice Russian chap on the user forum talked me through creating a Linux boot USB stick (which needed the Kaspersky database/licence to do the biz) which took over the PC and rooted out the rootkit.

So while K tech services are crap, the stuff is good (if you can get help when needed).

This was - as I said - a while ago, and things may've changed, but K's been good for me.

MWB is handy for an occasional scan - machine seems to run faster after a scan - but has mostly come up with stuff that K's already put in quarantine.

Avira was what PC Magazine recommended last time I checked.

I'd look at the latest pc publications to see what's hot now.

It depends on your preference and if you want to pay for it.

AV-test are recognised by PC Magazine & publish comparisons of the more popular anti-virus programmes.

But none of the virus producing hackers know this. They would never test their newest viruses by downloading a free AV and then see if they could infect it.

Yes, unfortunately someone has to get infected before the anti-virus writers can investigate.

The problem I find with anti-virus programs is that they invariably can only inoculate after an attack has happened somewhere. Unlike a biological virus like influenza, there cannot be an educated guess how a computer virus might mutate to become again viable, or a back door access point might be detected outside of the realm of those authorized to use it, or which already deployed but not activated tidbits of code are already waiting on all of our machines. Well all but those open source platforms where you have the time to examine all of the open source code. "That's not a back door. It's an open source troubleshooting portal."

The last line of defense is you that does notice a slow down of the computer, weird activity when idle, slow internet speed, normal speed when not connected to the internet.

Slow down--yep! Now and then it seems to come to a complete stop; irregular timing. Checking the resource monitor shows that the blue line (whatever it means) is maxed out on a disc read or write. I have not found out why this happens. When this condition stops after quite a few minutes, things speed up again. Within a program speed seems OK to me, but when starting something new it seems to be preoccupied with something--no hint (that I recognize) as to what it is. Virus scans have found nothing.

My old modem had a button on top for "standby" which disconnected the Internet. New modem has no such button, and I don't really know how to disconnect without unplugging it. The activity lights most of the time show no activity, but now and then they go crazy and I don't know what it is doing (updates are usually, I think, at other times.)

Are you maybe a bit short of RAM? My netbook (which I use in bed, mostly for browsing and watching movies) used to grind to a crawl (almost a halt sometimes) until I installed extra RAM. Made all the difference! The Performance tab of Task Manager should give you an idea.

Updates! havn't seen what system you are on but on two of my machines the symptoms you describe were caused by a (now known) glitch in windows updates. Turn it off, and keep turning it off, as it turns itself back on. You can update manually.

I thought it was a virus for weeks, and in a way, it was.

cncjim

In order to protect your computer from viruses these applications have to recognize the virus. So if it's something new none of them may be effective. The more manpower you apply to the problem of searching the web for new attacks. The sooner you can provide protection for your customers. Any software that is free limits it's ability to do so. As it may not have the manpower to do so. Most software that is free has no support for the same reasons. I would think all of them maybe using each other for research. Looking at each others updates to see if they missed something. So a good bit of it's timing on how soon they can get the virus update to you and when you cross paths with the virus.

Mac only, but when I found I was infected (very unusual), took it into a high end business repair site, for a lot of e-designers, photo guys, and media design sites--They recommended SOPHOS-- I installed it, and it does a good job of identifying and quarantining the odd virus coming in... Another log on the fire..

Hi

I would cast a negative vote for McAfee, I used them for a number of years and considered them very good but then it seemed that their standards dropped. There were issues with incompatibilities with some windows DLLs and MS and McAfee just seemed to pass the buck at one another - meanwhile some users could not connect online. Customer support went overseas and I found myself being connected to a help desk where politeness was very good, positive attitude was very good but empowerment to offer anything but the standard "read from this script" was zero. Not an isolated incident - others moaned and groaned in unison at the time - general consensus of the moaners was that they had fallen from their perch.

I am now using Norton - some complain about its speed but I am using very fast machines so I cannot comment.

I also dropped McAfee for a number of reasons. A friend in IT and data recovery suggested AVG free and I have been using that for a good 4 years. That and being very careful online.

Everyone is himself answerable to what he does or does not do. Each to his own.....

The Kaspersky or GData solution internet virus solutions plus Malwarebytes, is an easy solution to install and needs minimum "upkeeps" from the user. Which of course makes it attractive, particularly for someone not computer savvy.....

I have several friends who installed Malwarebytes with various Antivirus softwares who were BLOWN AWAY at just how much "CRAP" their windows PC had picked up.....them having thought they were SAFE up till then.....

I can only repeat that tests in top testing German mags show again that they are the best against more viruses than any other......

Or GData (if available where you live), with Mawarebytes together, is about the same as Kaspersky and Malwarebytes.

What I promise you is that when you make the installation, DOZENS of bits of bad software will be found and need to be erased.....Particularly with Malwarebytes.

The first scans of each could take a LONG time....with many "results!"

I buy my Kaspersky passwords on ebay each year for 3 PCs, that saves a lot!!

Best of luck!

No anti-virus program is going to be perfect. Every single one is reactive.

That is, someone will create the virus first before there is a fix.

Windows im the most vulnerable OS because:

1. It's the biggest gorilla on the block and authors of malicious software go for the best bang for their buck.

2. The Windows OS is architecturally poor in its design. Supporting files for applications are scattered and hidden all over the place. making fertile ground for malicious software to hide. That will never change because MS has too much invested in the system and the legacy software applications.

Your best defense is to research anti-virus programs and their reviews on the net and to avoid suspect web sites.

Also, don't click the 'unsubscribe me' links on junk emails. Sometimes they are real, but often they only help some institution validate a real email address. Other times there are bad people on the other end looking for victims.

Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware programs only work as good as their ability to keep their libraries current. The scum are always writing new programs and you have companies that hire themselves to major companies to create spyware to infest your computer so they can gather information on your shopping habits. They don't care if these programs bog down your computer, they just hope they can target you to buy something.

The IT at my company and my brother-in-law is the IT for an Oil Company, I was told by them "CCleaner, Malwarebytes, Ad-Aware and Spybot Search and Destroy. They are free, but you get better services if you buy the premium licenses. AVG is still good. I picked up a trojan recently and CCleaner and Malwarebytes got rid of it. You need to have a registry cleaner as well because just the anti-Spyware program isn't enough. You get rid of the running program that is slowing your computer down but if you don't get it out of your registry, it will just rewrite itself each time you reboot your computer.

One of the things I find most irritating about downloading these spyware programs and Adobe Viewers is that while you're downloading, they slip other programs on you, that if you're not paying attention and think it's just prompting you to the next step of the download, you are actually authorizing some other program to be installed. Those slow your system down and some of them will hijack your computer.

Your last sentence is a good point, always read the screen first!

Its mainly the free versions here....getting rid of the crap needs a steady hand sometimes too.....

Also, WHERE you download from sometimes makes a big difference.....

Amen to that! Stay out of the bad neighborhoods, or go dark!