Good Anti-trojan/infection Applications

[thehemi]

Co-workers workstation is clearly infected with something.

While running Firefix, he will get pop-ups from IE windows.

AVG, Ad-Aware, Stinger, CWShredder and HijackThis were

not able to turn up anything. Any suggestions on what apps

I can run to maybe turn up the problem? I'm not a pro, but

I know that every running service on his PC is something I

have seen under normal operation on all other PCs. But the

svchost.exe processes, I guess I never really know what all

of them are actually doing... one of them maybe is hijacked.

[TCH-Bruce]

Well there are plenty of utilities. Spybot Search and Destroy and Microsoft's new Anti-Spyware tool are a couple I'd try. And then there is Pest Patrol and Panda Software's online scanner.

[Madmanmcp]

MY first question would be...if this is a company computer is there an Admin or someone who is responsible for the upkeep of these computers? Normally this is their area and they do not like it when users install programs and start trouble shooting problems on their workstations.

 

Now, it is getting more and more difficult to find and remove the thousands of pests that are roaming around trying to infect your computer. They are being specially written to avoid detection and to hide from other programs. They are being written to even be invisible to the Operating System and to restore themselves after being deleted.

 

Bruce has given you a few programs and it looks like you already used some of the best ones out there. Have you tried booting into "Safe Mode" and then running them? In Safe Mode, these programs won't run and when not running they can not hide from the scanning programs.

 

See if that helps, otherwise you will need an expert to help you. An lately the experts say the only thing that is 100% sure to get rid of these "rootkits" is to nuke the hard drive and re-install from scratch.

[TCH-Tim]

I use Pest Patrol and it works well.

 

On a related note, I found this article last week discussing why we should all be logged in as Users, not Admins or Power Users. If we don't have access to mess up our systems, then most spyware won't either. Started doing it myself last week on my laptop. Takes some getting used to, but it seems to work. Instead of relying on some application to clean up after the fact, change your habits to try to prevent the junk in the first place.

 

Shouldn't be applicable at work, as everyone should be a User, but home users might want to give it a try.

[TCH-Rob]

Shouldn't be applicable at work, as everyone should be a User.

 

 

Not always true, at my previous job, every user we has was an admin on their computer. Made for interesting trouble calls.

[TCH-Tim]

Not always true, at my previous job, every user we has was an admin on their computer. Made for interesting trouble calls.

I guess I should say "shouldn't" be applicable at work, with quotes and a rolling eyes smiley guy. My first job as a network admin flunky was at a credit union where every now and then I'd come across a user that had to use some program and it required local admin privelages. Like you said, interesting trouble calls. (On yet another unrelated note, when I first got there I found that the local admin password on every workstation was empty. At a bank. Ah the memories.)

 

Anyway, the article makes the case that software developers especially should be in the habit of working as Users so they become aware of the security issues their software creates and help avoid the admin-rights-necessary workarounds we've all had to deal with.