Expert: Keith Davis - 4/1/2009

Question
Hiya Keith

I think I've got a reasonable defence (sorry, I forgot your an American) defense against virus infections; BitDefender, Microsoft Firewall and various spyware software and I still get virus infections.

I'm not querying the infections as such, I realise they can shoot in at the first opportunity, but I find the .exe and zip files I keep in my 'library' of software gets infected as well, not just vulnerable folders on my C drive. In fact these 'vulnerable' folders are fairly well protected, if the number of their infections is any guide.

Do you think it's a question of their always being infected but has only now come to light now with the benefit of updated signatures, a symptom of having second-rate antivirus software or some other reason? I'm no expert but I'd have thought any virus would head for the C drive rather than anywhere else where it lays almost dormant.

Also, I can understand the effect of having viruses on my C drive affecting its performance but having them in my non-operational and only-storage drives seems to affect the comp as well.

Can you help me at all with my very steep learning curve?

Thanks in advance,
Dave Crew  

Answer
Your learning curve does not sound very steep.
What you may be getting is something such as trojans rather than viruses. I'll list my 3 favorite security programs. All are free. I've used these programs for close to 7 years and have been virus and spyware free for the same amount of time.

Anti-virus- AVG: http://download.cnet.com/AVG-Anti-Virus-Free-Edition/3000-2239_4-10320142.html

Anti-Spyware- Spybot Search and Destroy: www.safer-networking.org

Firewall- ZoneAlarm- www.zonealarm.com

As for the infections that you already have, I would do a complete scan with AVG and see what it comes up with.

Let me know if I can help you further.

Keith