quick post from a newbie

I take pride in my "geekness" and appreciate all the tips you guys provide to us non-computer experts.

That being said, I am running a Dell laptop with Vista Home Premium. I have followed the advice of all here regarding keeping my PC "safe". I have McAfee Security Center running along with:

-Windows Defender
-SpyBot Search & Destroy
-SpyBlaster
-Comodo BO clean
-CrapCleaner

All are updated versions and I run scans weekly. I use Firefox only to browse the web.

That being said, everytime I run a scan on any of these products, I get no "results" in SpyBot or Defender. Is this the norm? I'm fearful that they aren't doing their job. I ask this because my family has another PC running XP and when I run say Spybot on that machine, it picks up things.

With that, I have 2 questions:

1) I see that you guys are recommending SuperAntiSpyware....is this "better" than anything listed above?

2) The other night I was on a website and got notice that McAfee blocked and removed a Puper Trojan virus. Should I be concerned about this? Even though it was "caught and blocked", I'm nervous.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Welcome to MajorGeeks.com![/FONT][FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]

With regard to the trojan, please follow the instructions in the below link and attach the requested logs when you finish these instructions.

[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Read & RUN ME FIRST Before Asking for Support[/FONT]

 

Lev-

I will get cracking on this....might take me a day or 2 to do all this though!

 

Hi NeonCactus,
Welcome to Major Geeks!

Your questions don't require that you run the instructions in the READ & RUN ME. Yes, it's normal for Spybot to find nothing. It means your computer is clean. And yes, the same with Windows Defender. The only thing I would recommend is that you not use Windows Defender if you have the McAfee Security Suite. It's redundant. I think Comodo BO Cleaner is also redundant, but if you're not having any issues with slowness, then leave it.

abri

 

Abri-

Thanks for the note. I was just going by the recommendations on the "keep your PC free of Malware" page. My system doesn't seem slow so I'll most likely keep as is.

As far as the trojan warning, do you recommend anything? It looks like it was caught but should I do anything else (other than stay off the page the warning came off)?

Thanks for the help.

-NC

 

Hi NeonCactus,

McAfee's job is to catch and remove trojans. It's certainly in their interest to announce that they are doing their job. If you are worried, I'd simply go to the Vista Cleaning Procedure and follow the instructions for installing and running MalwareBytes on a Vista computer. Remember to turn UAC off and reboot before you do the download and installation. If MalwareBytes finds anything, maybe there's something to worry about. That will give you more information.

abri