ok so it seems i've been having a pretty bad semester with computer security. I month or so ago i got hit with a hard virus that forced me to reformat and reinstall windows. That was a bitch, and just now i was getting everything back in line with all my programs and I found myself encountering some problems i'm pretty sure are related to viruses.

currently my main problems are:
I cannot right-click on my desktop or in internet explorer, but can in other programs
I get random pop ups all the time in internet explorer
Only internet explorer can connect to the internet... all other browsers and programs can't.
edit: also can't edit registry, which makes installing programs difficult
Various other things dont seem to work right... except in safe mode.

So i'm wondering what programs do you guys use to clean up and protect your windows? I'm looking for cheap to free options since i'm a poor college student.

try adaware to get rid of the spyware, I've used AVG for free virus protection for years, never had a virus. http://www.download.com/AVG-Anti-Virus-Free-Edition/3000-2239_4-10320142.html

-AVG

-Don't use IE

-Don't click on links to urls with hyphens in them, etc.

never had a virus. got a trojan from d2 botting stuff once way back in the day, but it was the easiest trojan ever, I just downloaded the trojan installer and used it to uninstall itself.

i dont usually use IE, except for now because nothing else can get online. I usually use firefox.

I've never heard of the hyphens thing... interesting that the link to the AVP has hyphens in it... can i trust that link?

in the www.blah.com part. one hyphen is fine, like natural-selection.org, but two is bad news. same goes for excessive periods.

TechSupportAlert A nice list of freeware utilities, though it's not updated that frequently. However, it's quite good overall.

I have Symantec (not freeware, but I get it free from my university) for on-access (you should use AVG for that), Clamwin (remarkably picks up random crap that AVG/Symantec does not), Adaware, ewido, Prevx, and, for when I'm playing with fire, Sandboxie. All free. If you use IE, there are a couple utilities out there that help defend IE in particular - at the very least give SpywareBlaster a looksee since it changes some basic IE settings to make it more secure and protect against ActiveX exploits.

Most AVs, for example, have a 2-3% non-overlapping area in their coverage, which means 2 (significantly different) AVs will get you a small improvement in coverage.

I should note that, in my build, aside from sandboxing and my firewall, the piece of software that does most of the actual work seems to be Prevx.

Given that your system seems to be badly infected already, you're going to need some tools to clean it up. There's a decent chance you have some polymorphic trojans or rootkits or other fun shit. I think ewido will get some of those... but for rootkits, well... That's always fun. There are some dumbfire ones out there, but if you can manage it, Sysinternals has a solid rootkit tool. I forget its name, though!

Best of luck!

*cough* Mozilla fire fox, yeah *cough* it's real easy to be virus secure when your web browser doesn't even have basic functions that date back to 1994.

Generally, if you've already been infected, it's too late. You maybe able to clean out the virus with malware removers and virus scanners, but with the more extensive infections, there will forever after be minor windows issues from unset tools, corrupted registry, and basically 'holes' in the OS. Ye may just have to deal with formatting, starting over, and putting in better protection next time. Once you get yer stuff reinstalled, you may want to look into using a tool such as Norton Ghost, for a quick recovery.

AVG is pretty good. I'd recommend backing it up with at least one other virus tool (don't need em both running, just alternate scans from time to time). If it's an e-mail virus that nailed ye, remember AVG doesn't scan mail archived before its installation, unlike Bitdefender:

Bitdefender is a little bit better, but not so much as to switch over to. Its free variant is less full featured, but has a larger virus database, and the full version has a lot more overhead than AVG. As such it's best as a supplemental defense: http://www.bitdefender.com/scan8/ie.html (There's also a free resident version in there somewhere)

Third choice is Trend Micro, which is not as good as either of the above, but picks up one or two they may miss:
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/

Spyware Doctor is good as it picks up several malware programs and internet scripts that Bitdefender and AVG don't consider to be viruses (has a very efficient resident script scanner that attaches to IE), in addition to its own extensive virus database. However, there is no free version of it that includes removal tools. The free version can only scan:
http://www.tucows.com/preview/365586

(Lavasoft Ad-aware has become all but useless, so I won't bother linking it, but you can search for it as a fully functioning free alternative adware tool)

Hijack This is an indispensable tool, if you are tech savvy. It lists just about every hook in Windows, describes several of them. It does not distinguish between legit and evil hooks though, so if you do not know what you are looking for, it does more harm than good. Still, this has the advantage of giving you the ability to track down all sorts of "legit" malware that none of the above virus/adware detectors will grab. Such as that you agree to with the EULA in Acrobat Reader, Quicktime, Realplayer, and Windows Media Player 9+.

I've a library of 48 viruses I keep in an encrypted archive to test these things with. No one tool detects them all so no one tool will keep you 100% safe (also note: none will keep you safe from an encrypted archive until the program actually runs - good to know when launching strange executables, as it means they do no good if the buggar is hardcoded and decrypts direct to memory - which is becoming increasingly common). Bit Defender and AVG score the best, getting between 27 and 32 of these viruses each (not the same ones). Norton and MacAfee fair the worst, getting around a dozen each, last I tested them (about six months ago). Trend Micro scores in-between at 20, picking up a few none of the others could. Spyware doctor did the same, also picking up several none of the others could.

Good luck. ...and always remember: www stands for "Wild Wild West".

That's why you sandbox!

Though I think a good HIPS will nail them on load and prevent them from running.

I've been using firefox for a long time now, with the adblock plus extension. Way better then IE, i dont even touch it. IE is just one big hole to me. But anyways i agree with thoth, AVG is good i have it and i also use the trend micro online scan.

I also have lavasoft adware but like thoth said its become pretty much useless, i usually scan with spy bot search and destroy every now and then to keep an eye out. Also take a look at my processes and startup items in msconfig every so often. I do not have any antivirus software running in the background though. It's just a matter of knowing what not to get into on the intraweb, been running this installation of XP for well over a year.

Unfortunately, from what I've read, due to the way the winderz closed source kernel works, you cannot dynamically read its "personal" memory space, and it's impossible to build a virtual machine for. So if the program assembles the virus there, no resident shield can catch it, at which point Sandboxing is your only option.

Although I just ghost every few days, myself. I've never actually tried Sandboxing, but it seems it'd be a nasty performance hit. (Granted, ghosting is a nasty HDD hit, if you don't have the space to spare).

You sandbox things that make grues run away... like, shtuff from file sharing. If you really want to run/install it, you'll feel much safer after giving it a run through. Admittedly, I rely more on backups than anything else. ^_^

agreed.. and stop dling gay kitty pr0n.

You might have bad sectors on your hdd, but I doubt it. Format q.
Also there are so many security holes in IE they "micrcrap patch it like once every six months"gg . Theres all sorts of plugins for Firefox like anti scripts and java,popups blah blah.
Genral options includes preventing sites to install stuff, does IE have that?
I have an xp box...I dont know why yet... But I use spybot, avg and soho.

If your interested I know Fedora core is really trying to make there look and feel like that of MAC os

Yeah IE has all that...

...and more importantly, IE supports HTML standards that were established a decade ago.

IE is fairly secure if you put it into nazi mode (restrict everything), and still supports HTML proper in that mode.

I do hate IE, to be honest. But Mozilla is far too hyped when it can't even do what IE was a decade before. Someone needs to come up with a fully functional alternative, so I don't have to write three to four versions of every web page I put up. You *can* have security and functionality, and a most of the things Mozilla lacks have nothing to do with security. I mean Anchor tags, FFS! ><

In reality, a properly configured IE would be about comparable (probably better) for security compared to Firefox, with one notable exception: everyone targets IE. With such a large market share, including the vast majority of corporate America, IE is a far preferable target to Firefox. So, in truth, you are safer with FF. ^_^

I use Firefox primarily, but this has more to do with tweakability (Greasemonkey ftw) than anything else. I guess, if you wanted standards compliability, you could use... Opera? Or, go with the IE-in-FF route, which seems to work remarkably well for viewing troublesome things (though you ought to tweak IE for security first).