Dealing with Trojans

The most important thing you should know...  is about how you get them.

•  your visiting web sites, often while the user was simply shopping.
• Installing FREE programs like screen savers, tool bars, games, etc
• Sneaky deceptive web sites intended to show up when you are searching for something.
• Peer file sharing for Music and Movie files. You may get an unwanted freebie with your free file.

• Maybe you turn off your computer at night (when the Anti Virus runs it's scan).  If this is you, pay attention: Most viruses plant a "seed" that "Calls home" when you reboot. Many people turn their machine off when they get done.  The seed has been planted. Anti Virus scans in the wee hours of the morning while you sleep... unless you turn off your machine!  Next time you turn on your machine, the seed runs, calls home, and plants the devil on you machine... because your expensive anti virus scanner did not get to run.
• Many Trojans / viruses depend on you turning off your machine.  They launch when you restart your computer.
• Others:  The Rootkit... the demon from hell! They can hide from you and me, and sometimes the virus tools.  When found and removed, they are back when you restart your machine. Sometimes I can find it, but often... not so.  The machine will have to be recovered or restored. I hope you had your personal data backed up.  Photos and music have become a big, expensive problem to back up.

1. You "pay yourself" less than you will pay me for performing data backup. 
2. You know better than I do as to what is worth the extra time and hard drive space.
3. My Virus/Trojan repair service is capped at (3) three hours, but data backup is a separate billed activity respective of how much data and how many users have their own user id.

Most infected machines...

...that I service already have an anti virus product installed.  The user does not know how to exploit the tool before bringing the computer to me, or how to respond to warning messages.

Most of them have expired license.  The product still works, but the latest updates are not installed.  When your license expires, all that happens is that the updates stop.

Most of the machines brought to me could be cleaned by the user simply by starting their already present virus scan.

On some machines the virus has disabled the virus scanner, and it has blocked you ability to access and download new tools or programs.  One ploy is to tell you each thing you try to start... is infected.  That is false.

If you can boot into SAFE MODE With Networking, Download VIPRE RESCUE here.  It will start itself in most cases.  It does a very deep scan and will run for 2 or more hours (depends on the size of your hard drive).  It does very well at cleaning.  Only the very newest release of a virus will be missed.  Few people get those.

If VIPRE RESCUE does not help you, you will need my services.

My Recomendations:  Get more involved!

Most of the machines brought to me have pre-installed, by the manufacturer, Norton or McAfee products.  They do perform pretty well, but I stongly advise against them.  They are typical "big business" attitudes and practices.  They are sneaky about installing other products that are not your friend and use up resources.  Google and Yahoo "add on tools" are the usual items.  I recommend you unistall them and not use them. There is no "free lunch" in this world. you alway pay in some way.  Google and Yahoo are big abusers of you.

Note: Those add on tools do not uninstall well.  There are functional pieces left behind.  I do no tknow if it is intentional, or just Microsoft's poor uninstall tools.

Defending yourself from Trojans...
You are your best defender. Get smart about it.

Disclaimer:  I do not have the time or interest to evaluate all the products and tools available. Once I have identified good products that help me with computer service and defending my own machines, I have no interest in doing more.    Link Comment Cost Consumer Reports praised VIPRE and is my favorite. They offer free help if you can perform the information gathering with the tools they needexecuted and results sent to them. VIPRE compared to Kapersky ($59) here. In general I like Kapersky. $29/yr.  Live USA help to US customers. $49 / year with firewall.  Competitors call it "Internet Security" and charge more.  Unless you have networking and understand how to interact with firwall warnings I would not encourage you one way or the other regarding the value of the firewall. I have it on only one machine. Grisoft AVGFree I really like this one. It is very good but not great. (Watch out... for default install of google desktop. Remove the check mark.) free or more. You get what you pay for, and you get "encouraged" to by their upscale products. Avast Home Usually only techies know about this one. I have cleaned a machine that would not have been infected if they used VIPRE free or more Trend Micro They also offer a free scan online. see below.  See a tech comparison of Trend and VIPRE here. $39/yr Norton Do not get this one. it works pretty good.  I hate working on a machine with Norton installed!  Sneaky.  Installs "helpers" that are not for your benefit.  Note: "CA" or "Computer Assosiates" is Norton with a different user interface; nice interface. Works good, and pricey McAfee Good, but over priced.  Sneaky.  Installs "helpers" that are not for your benefit. I will not use it. Works good, and it's pricey Microsoft Security Esentials made for VISTA and Windows 7.  AlLso works on XP I have no opinion.  It is free. I have machines in the shop to remove viruses it did not find... but that is a common problem with all of them. Microsoft Security Esentials is certainly not better than other products.  It is free! I believe you get what you pay for.

Firefox browser is the best prevention you can have.  Use it!  Firefox has more useful user features than does MS Internet Explorer(but Microsoft is catching up).  Use the very good Firefox Help to learn about Firefox. It's good.

• For email, Thunderbird is your friend. (Thunderbird is the companion to Firefox, like Outlook is the companion to Microsoft Internet Explorer)

• Thunderbird is much easier to configure than is Outlook or Windows Mail (VISTA and Windows 7)

• If you install Thunderbird, at your first launch, Thunderbird will ask you if you want to import settings from Microsoft Outlook (VISTA Windows Mail) and you Answer 'yes'.  It will import your contacts and email.

Tourist note:
Sea Monkey is: the Firefox browser and the Thunderbird email client packaged together (with some more tools you probably do not care about). Created by non-profit  Mozilla.org. Think of "Sea Monkey" as the newest Netscape-like entity.