Computer & Virus Problem

[Sam Slater]

Sorry to hear about all that Snake. What makes of hard drive were they?

You know I've never had a hard drive failure in 12 years. Had Seagate Barracudas, Samsung Spinpoints, and Western Digitals all ranging from 2gig upto 250gigs.

Lots of passwords for forums or sites that don't store bank details, I keep within a googlemail account. (I'm sure you can use a google account to back up a few gigs of data, though I've not tried). Anything involving bank details I write down on good old paper and store away with all my personal stuff at home, in a locked filing cabinet.

Any films, pics or music I'd back up on dvd as well as another drive. I don't like the looks of these 1TB hard drives.......can you imagine one of those failing? Much safer to have 4 250gb drives hooked up.

[eduardo]

You know that I used to think that those people that trashed the commercial Internet Security packages were people who needed to get out more but after this week and the nightmare that I've had then I have to say that they are all right and it was indeed myself who needs to take my head out of the sand and listen.

There's been 7 different viruses on this computer and Norton Anti Virus hasn't picked up any of them despite several scans and I had to use the free versions of Ad-Aware, Bit Defender and Trend Micro to detect them.

Anyways my Norton subscription expires in a couple of weeks so it is going to get binned and I will give AVG ago and if anybody can recommend a good firewall then I'd welcome the help and info although I might start a new topic for that.

Thanks for taking the time to reply and thanks for your help which is appreciated.

[eduardo]

Thanks for the reply and for the tip Trumpy and I'll take a look at it.

[Snake Diamond]

D: - Hitachi Deskstar 80Gb
E: - Western Digital 300Gb

alot of the 30Gb was music & software, luckily I still have an account with the music site I bought the tracks from, so all I need to do is pay for another month's access & redownload the entire list of songs I previously had, then redownload all the software from download.com

[Trumpton]

Steganos uses less resources than Norton - and I think is a much better AVP system.

[Deuce Bigolo]

Personally I think firewalls are a pain in the ass and because I don't do online banking or keep anything of any real value on my PC I just use the inbuilt XP firewall(stops incoming).

Its more trial & error as to which one suits your set-up in my experience


As for anti-virus...said to detect between 80-95% of infections...scary

I'd be using a scanner like bit defender every week minimum

I think the bottom line is if you value your privacy don't do it on a PC
no matter how secure you think you are

[Deuce Bigolo]

Everybody use less than Norton

I think symantec are really more aimed at the business sector and
personal users are just icing on the cake

[Snake Diamond]

A good start for a firewall is always Zone Labs "Zone Alarm" from , if not, try NeoWatch or Black Ice.

[Snake Diamond]

Yeah Trumpton, from what I've heard Steganos is 1 of the better products available, but I've never used it, so I can't say either way what it's like, AVG from Grisoft suits me fine, & it's free! !grin!

[Deuce Bigolo]

A very useful site and whichever one you decide to use do the shields up,port & leak tests to see how secure you really are