Can I trust A-Squared Anti Virus?

Discussion in 'Malware Help - MG (A Specialist Will Reply)' started by ulrichburke, Feb 18, 2010.

  1. ulrichburke

    ulrichburke Private E-2

    Dear Anyone.

    I DID have 2 scan programs, Super Anti Spyware and, as of 5 days ago, A-Squared, which I saw recommended on this site SOMEWHERE - please don't ask which thread, can't find it now but it was here somewhere, honest!

    Did a full scan with A-Squared. It took hours and found over 900 viruses (inc. keyloggers and ad-bots.) I thought 'Wow!! Super Anti Spyware missed all those!?!' because SAS had only found 15 viruses!

    The next time I did a scan, it told me Windows Explorer was a virus and quarantined it! I had no desktop, no START button, just the picture of the green hill. Did a restart, just the green hill. Had to totally reinstall Windows and spend forever reinstalling all my other software. Grrrr.

    Now, I haven't been online today save for right now to write this. Why do I say this? Went out and left the comp. on compiling some software I'd written (slow comp. big program!) Came back and A-Squared was triumphantly telling me it had found over 850 viruses, even though I hadn't been online and it had cleaned the 900 from the first time I'd been online.

    Now considering it had just 'quarantined' Windows Desktop, I'm wondering 2 things. Firstly, is A-Squared known for finding false positives? And secondly, how do you tell which ARE false positives? I mean, it's perfectly theoretically possible there are many self-replicating viruses on my computer though, as I've cleaned 900 with A-Squared and haven't been back online since, I'd think it was unlikely. Secondly, if I tell it to quarantine them all, is it going to kill Windows again? I know I can reinstall Windows, it's just a drag having to reinstall all my other programs as well. (I'm gonna have to quarantine them all this time and pray, because reading where it's found them isn't going to help me and I'm sure you don't want a log of 854 virus hiding places to go through!)

    Just to let you know - I don't download porn or visit porn sites, I DO download trial versions of software from sites like Tucows and Download.com and Softpedia, if that's bad, tell me. I don't download from crack sites though I have been given copies of legit. software by people in the past (they've just copied their legit. bought disks for me, that's how come I've got COBOL, Visual Basic and Python! Don't think those would have had viruses because they've never seen the Internet.)

    I'm running XP Pro SP3 on a Gigabyte motherboard with 2gigs DDL 2 RAM (I think I've got those letters wrong but you'll know what I mean!)

    I've never hit this problem of overzealousness with a virus protection prog. before! How do I tell how accurate it's being?

    Yours confusedly

    ulrichburke
     
    Last edited: Feb 18, 2010
    ulrichburke, Feb 18, 2010
    #1
  2. chaslang

    chaslang MajorGeeks Admin - Master Malware Expert Staff Member

    Simply put, NO you cannot trust a-squared. It has way too many false detections.
     
    chaslang, Feb 18, 2010
    #2
  3. ulrichburke

    ulrichburke Private E-2

    Thanks, Chaslang! Just after my last post, A-squared told me I had a virus in my desktop and ate the desktop while quarantining it! Re-installed Windows and something it HADN'T found locked me out of my own hard drive-every time I booted and got to the bit where you click on your name to enter, it slammed the door in my face. Saw the desktop for about half a second then it came up 'Logging out!' and that was it. Got a few price quotes for hard-drive rescue and it was far cheaper buying a new hard drive and installing XP on that, which I've done.

    OK. What can I download to get past the shutout virus on the old hard drive and see what's left of 170gig of data? I've got a LOT of it backed up but I'm afraid my backing up wasn't as up-to-date as it should have been on the rest of it. Thing is, how can I run HijackThis or anything to help you guys as I can't access the hard drive? That virus has even got safe mode covered. Tried Safe Mode, Safe Mode with C: Prompt, it won't let me into either of them. You choose them, but it takes you straight into normal Windows startup and then to the point at which you're locked out.

    Help, please!

    Yours hopefully

    ulrichburke.
     
    ulrichburke, Feb 21, 2010
    #3
  4. ulrichburke

    ulrichburke Private E-2

    Just an addition to my last post.

    The guy who's been recommending A-Squared is BirdBath, rank Sergeant Major here. The post addy is here: http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=124271

    As it's reporting too many false positives, perhaps someone should tell him this? That's the thread I read which made me install it.

    Yours respectfully

    ulrichburke
     
    ulrichburke, Feb 21, 2010
    #4
  5. chaslang

    chaslang MajorGeeks Admin - Master Malware Expert Staff Member

    Not sure what you mean but it you mean the Desktop disappeared then that is quite normal. Many protection programs will shutdown the Windows shell ( that is Windows Explorer ) while removing malware and that will cause the Desktop to disappear. It normally will come back on its own or you can just restart Windows Explorer. Otherwise a reboot should bring it back.

    Then it sounds unlikely that you actually reinstalled Windows since in most cases your problems would be gone after a reinstall if performed properly. A master boot record infection will survive a reinstall but it will not lock you out of your PC. Another possibility is that you reinstalled an infection when you reinstalled Windows and any other software.

    When you reinstalled, did you format the drive? If so, your data is gone. If not, you always just slave this drive off of the new drive you are installing and recover your data from it. Not a topic for this forum though. So if you require help with that, then post in the Software Forum.

    HijackThis is not going to help you at all. And if you cannot boot the drive to run anything, and also because your reinstalled Windows, which was likely a mistake, there probably is not much for us to do anyway.

    At first I thought you meant you would just keep getting logged out when logging. Like it would send you back to the Welcome Screen/login form again. This would normally mean the userinit.exe file was deleted or corrupted. Or that registry keys related to it were corrupted. But if you really reinstalled, this should not be the problem.
     
    chaslang, Feb 22, 2010
    #5
  6. chaslang

    chaslang MajorGeeks Admin - Master Malware Expert Staff Member

    You are referring to a thread that is more than 2 years old!!!!! a-squared has changed a 1000 times since then and that thread was referring to a free 4 month trial which is also non-existant.

    Where you should be looking is here: How to Protect yourself from malware!
     
    Last edited: Feb 22, 2010
    chaslang, Feb 22, 2010
    #6

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