Malware scans? Antivirus? What are these things? Oh wait, hmm, it's coming back to me.. about 9 yrs ago I dealt with those problems, then switched to the scary Linux..
--informative rant--
Nowadays people can just download an iso, burn it, boot from the cd, and with 6 very simple steps erase the virus (I do mean MS Windows), and have a safe and fast operating system, all for free. It's even easier than installing windows, no need to input a cdkey. Just make sure to backup all your images, documents, and videos on a seperate drive (cd, external, flash drive, secondary hard drive, whatever) first.
The _ONLY_ group of people that (CAN'T) do what they "NEED" in linux are hardcore gamers that only play the latest and greatest games. Web browsing, flash (youtube etc), yes - even porn sites, torrents, office work (Full featured spreadsheet applications, document writing programs, light to heavy duty database applications, scientific calculators), are all standard features.
With wine one can even run many many "windows only" programs, including MS office, world of warcraft, and tons of other stuff. Kubuntu is my preferred, but many like the gnome feel of regular Ubuntu. Did you know KDE had widgets long before windows? Did you know compiz (Now compiz-fusion) was doing advanced desktop graphics stuff (Like wobbly windows, window previews, desktop zoom, previews in alt+tab, window transparency, and tons of other features) years before windows? I only mention Ubuntu and not any of the plethora of others simply because it's the easiest to set up and use with very little messing around (best for beginners, and people who don't want to waste their time).
--end informative rant--
--Useful information on fixing most common windows problems following--
All that being said like a (wonderful) commercial, to many people are to scared to run anything else. "It's all I know." or "I don't have time to learn to point and click in another OS". Which makes me money because, I go out with a cd(or flash drive) containing hijackthis!, combofix, google-chrome installer (Because IE is so crap), and one or two other tiny utilities from bleepingcomputer, and typically make $50USD a pop for an hour (With only about 5 minutes actually interacting with the computer). Once in a long while I need to open the registry and find the RunOnce section to locate a piece of malware that's not detected due to somebody changing a few bits in the header of the program with a hex editor..
And for that, I thank you all.
Sorry for going on so long. It's a passion, if you can't tell.
through ie9 (i usually use ff, but was checking the skins in ie9). I'd gotten busy and ignored ignored the java update at work. The warning popped up, and like an idiot i clicked on it without looking closely. When i called IT (at 5pm on a Friday!) and told them i had gotten the virus, the first thing they asked was whether it was the fake warning virus. I now think that the the virus got a foothold because i clicked on the trojan " warning" on my bottom toolbar and installed it myself.
This is the trojan I got from fb and I am only assuming this is where I got it since I had two tabs open-fb and ecf that day. I had first went to fb than ecf when I got a McAfee window warning which was fake. I have ran several malware patches and it looked as if I had gotten rid of the trojans. (Yes the one trojan opens the gate for several others to enter.) After the removal I got back online and the first place I went was here, ecf and I immediately got the windows recovery trojan back again. I am in the long process of getting rid of it again. Be careful it leaves problems on your pc once you get rid of it. And it is a possibility it is coming through from here, ecf to more vulnerable pc. I have At&t McAfee, Malwarebytes Antimalware, Super Anti-spyware, windows and mcafee firewalls. All I have is apparently sub-standard in blocking trojans. Thanks Rolygate for the tip, I will try the online security scan when I am through with cleaning my laptop and desktop of this trojan.
