You got McAfee on your PC because McAfee paid Dell to put it on your hard drive (without asking you if you wanted your hard drive space used up that way) and it is improbable that you could ever get out all the pieces of it out of your registry, even if you uninstall it.
I preface this by saying that I use XP SP2 and Outlook Express and have no plans to go any further with Microsoft. When XP SP2 won't do what I need, I'm moving to Linux. I'm not willing to give Microsoft carte blanche access to my PC, which is what I would have to do for SP3 or for Vista or Windows7. So everything below applies to XP - whether it applies to later MS systems, I have no idea.
I have used Avast Anti-Virus, Zone Alarm Firewall, Spywareblaster spyware/adware guard for many years with never a problem. All are free, but if you want auto-updating with Spywareblaster it is $9.99 per YEAR (and well worth it IMO). You must be sure all the Windows "security" stuff is disabled. I know these are better than MS offerings and the not-free (Symantec, McAfee, etc). I've never had a virus or trojan or malware in the last 10 years (or spy/ad ware after installing Spywareblaster). I used to run AdAware and SpyBot, but eventually stopped because, since I started running Spywareblaster, they never found anything. I do also use a router with a hardware firewall.
The best insurance you can have is a simple backup COPY (not a proprietary backup file that requires particular software to read/restore) of your documents/email store and an image-file creator, such as Acronis True Image for your C: drive: system, registry, & installed programs. You really need two partitioned hard drives to do this effectively (internal hard drives are now pretty cheap and quite easy to install).
Drive 1 - C:\ system/registry and installed programs
D:\ My Documents (all of your files, including email "store" - there is a way to
move these to a different partition & still maintain MyDocument pointers)
Many applications allow you to redirect their data to a different folder.
G:\ Pagefile (fixed size to fit into partition with a bit to spare)
Drive 2 - E:\ backup COPY of partition D: (Second Copy Backup will maintain this easily)
F:\ image files of partition C: (Acronis True Image)
With this, there is pretty much nothing you cannot recover from except a lightning strike - and even that if you copy partitions E:\ and F:\ to an external drive occasionally. Even a hard drive crash won't hurt your data, because you have a redundant copy of everything on your second hard drive. Using this system, you would of course, turn off System Restore on all drives, as it would be unnecessary. You could restore your system (registry/programs) to any earlier date for which you saved an image file (even to the very beginning of a new computer) without affecting your data at all (including email store).
And of course, good sense. Don't ask a site to "Remember Me" unless it is innocuous information with security like "useridme" and "password4me"; don't visit questionable sites; use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer; if you keep sensitive information on your PC, then zip it into AES encrypted files with something like WinZip or SecureZip (then you don't have to encrypt your backups). Roboform is a great password / form filler if your master password is good.
AnnaSummers
----- Original Message -----
From: [log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 8:44 PM
Subject: Re: Getting Rid of Viruses
Try the Online scanner here:
https://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm
You can also get Microsoft Security Scanner while you're there, which is
free and highly rated. Be sure to uninstall McAfee.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [PCBUILD] Getting Rid of Viruses
From: [log in to unmask]
Date: Mon, September 27, 2010 11:52 am
To: [log in to unmask]
I am windows 7, Dell Studio desktop. I just recently got these viruses.
Don't know how but two of them can't be removed by McAfee.
1. PandaQuickRemove.zip
2. Ucified.rar
3. Artemis!F9B28A23644A
Now.. the fonts were so small in trying to read them on McAfee.. like a
size 8 in XP... if not smaller and I really couldn't make out what No. 3
said... I didn't know if it was Artenis!FF9B28A23644A or if that was an
RN
...... after the e.... Either way.. I have McAfee, which I see now is
the
pits, cause it can't get rid of it and I even tried to do it in save
mode and
that's when I saw the first two of them listed.
Now.. it these can't be removed totally, I want to get rid of this
McAfee
and get something else. I used to use Spysweeper put out by WebRoot and
I
liked that, but this McAfee came with this new computer so left it on
here.
What do you suggest is the best in keeping viruses and trojans from
getting on here. Doesn't matter whether its free or I have to pay for
it.
Harriet
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