made it 4 months without a virus

[allen]

The 1st virus on this machine was about 2yrs from when i got the laptop.
had this thread going trying to fix it, and eventually did a fresh install of the entire system.
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 7&start=60

I'm pretty sure i did everything right since the fresh install then, but 4 months later, i got another.

I've kept up on my windows updates, did most of my computing on a power user account, but got the virus while on my limited user account! I also use windows firewall, and mlin.net's startup monitor and startup control panel. Firefox version was one step before 3.5, which just came out, and i was 1 day behind in avg free definitions updates.

This virus isn't letting me run malwarebytes, or hijack this. But there was twex.exe and other stuff, i forget now. Trying to get rid of it, safe mode, avg scan, ccleaner, all the stuff i learned from last time, but it got worse in the process, and now i just did an r&r restore to a month old backup from predesktop area. 1st time doing that, seems to be ok so far...

I'm thinking i should just use linux for internet browsing, and do everything else in xp pro... Or would windows 7 be safe to do everything including internet browsing?

[ZaZ]

Where have you been? I've not had a virus in years. I don't even use virus software on any of my PCs, just a firewall. What I like to do is do a clean install, getting the settings just the way I like, then make an image of the drive, which I can put back at any point if I were to get a virus or some other issue.

You certainly can use Linux for Internet browsing. With a LiveCD, you don't even have to install it. The ATI card may be problematic as ATI doesn't have near as good Linux support as nVidia, but it's been a while since I installed Linux on ATI machine. Maybe things have gotten better since.

[allen]

i had a similar plan, i also have r&r do a restore every month. Ironically it would've been the day before getting the virus, but i didn't have time to let it run.

I'm also a bit skeptical of r&r in windows and on the predesktop, it seems to have errors often, for example advanced mode and quick restore don't work, only full restore.

I really thought having a limited user account would've helped, now i wonder if i need to bother having the power user account instead of just using an admin account for everything, and linux for riskier web browsing.

Once i get this restoration situated, i'll try to find a linux that's relatively light on drive space and install it, i barely ever have my optical drive in.

[ajkula66]

What's "riskier web browsing"?

Haven't had a virus on a laptop since 2002...

[rkawakami]

Searching for hacked or "free" software (i.e., warez), participating in torrents, visiting sketchy web sites and downloading files off of Usenet newsgroups (esp. the alt.binaries ones). Those are just some of the things that I can think of....

Had my first exposure in many, many years to a worm a couple of weeks ago at the company I'm contracting at. Plugged one of my USB thumb drives (one that I've used for quite some time) into one system to copy a file and when I went to transfer it onto the Dell laptop at my desk, immediately got a warning from Kaspersky that the drive was infected with a virus (!!). Thankfully it was a simple one to get rid of. It was actually on the Windows Server 2003 machine being used as the host computer for a memory tester. No AV software was being run on it .

[allen]

the internet's a big place, some say infinite. maybe most of us are on safe sites, but there's a lot to to explore, watching/downloading movies, music, software, even non pirated smaller companies, etc.

i've decided against installing linux ubuntu, it's a hassle for just part time use and it needs its own partition.
i already have 2 partitions on my primary internal drive, which is only 100gb, and both partitions are 75% full usually.
i was considering upgrading that drive, but the complexity/effort to do so AND having to spend money for it...
i feel like running off a thumb drive would be too slow, and i prefer not using an optical drive.
i think i can try to rely on r&r rollbacks when need be, it seemed to work ok this time.

[RealBlackStuff]

Install a Virtual PC, load that for browsing. It's self-contained and has no 'contact' to any other parts of your laptop/pc.
Once you switch it of, all caches, temp files, browse traces, etc. are gone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LZwXCQ71to