Windows Virus Scans

If you have a computer running Windows and haven’t run a virus scan recently, I highly recommend you do so.  I have a little XP Box that I use for nothing other than playing an online MMORPG or occasionally burning a DVD.  Most of the time it’s powered down and even it managed to pick up a virus despite the fact that I neither web browse or e-mail with it and I’ve got all unnecessary services turned off.

     I’ve also seen a huge up tick in the number of botnet brute force password guessing attempts, from on the order of around 300 a day to over 2000 in the last few days, a sure sign some new nasty Windows malware is circulating.

     In addition to whatever anti-virus you normally use, I highly recommend installing Malware Bytes and enabling root kit and full machine scans and doing a scan with it.  In my experience, it often finds things no other anti-viral software does.  For Anti-Virus software, I use AVG, Kaspersky is also good though heavier weight, it consumes a lot of CPU, and not good on a gaming machine.  I do not recommend Norton or McAfee as many of the support calls I get from customers not able to get or send e-mail often resolve by disabling one of these two.