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Antivirus, Antispyware, Antitrojan and Firewall Prorgams
Hi,
Got hit by a trojan on the very first day after a new install of Windows XP. I had avast! 4.5 Home Edition (to address Viruses) and Sygate Personal Firewall Pro 5.6 (to address attacks/hacks) installed. But it seems like I didn't have enough protection.
Damage:
The trojan did the following damage:
Disabled Task Manager.
Windows folder had to two executables that even loaded in Safe Mode: loadclean.exe and kernels32.exe.
I did some research and they were meant to do more damage to the system. Fortunately the firewall blocked the outgoing connections. (Now this is how Windows XP Firewall is not enough).
Recovery:
HKLM and KHCU had entries for kernels32.exe and I deleted them. Also ran a reg setting to get Task Manager back. Went to Safe Mode and deleted the two files.
Recovery wasn't 100%. Every time Windows started, a message popped up saying kernels32.exe was not found. Created a dummy file. It still opened up two command prompt windows.
Steps to take to prevent this happening again:
Until today I thought Antivirus and Firewall is all you need. I was very dissapointed. Formatted again and installed Windows XP. Determined this time to use the computer as a Limited User. But as usual got discouraged by all the error messages and usual program behaviours I had to face with applications. Limited User is too restrictive although I recommended this in the past. So that's not an option.
Now the system is clean but I have several questions. I was wondering...
1. Obviously it seems there is a need of a 3rd program that protects the system realtime. What program(s) could real-time protect your system from virus, spyware and trojan horses and also web attacks? My current system is: avast! 4.5 as an Antivirus and Sygate as a Firewall (AntiHacks)
2. Are AntiSpyware programs same as AntiTrojan programs?
Cheers,
McoreD
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