When I switched on my laptop this morning I got a helpful message from Windows. It had noticed a program acting suspiciously and, for my safety and security, had shut it down. Here’s the message dialog.
Yep, that’s right, Windows Explorer was identified as a virus.
Well, not exactly. More a question of weird stuff going on that impacted Explorer and made it look like it had been infected with something. A bit of web browsing showed that this is quite a common occurrence. I suspect that the culprit was one of the more badly behaved drivers I have installed – both the software that came with my HP printer and the BBC iPlayer crash so often you’d think they were auditioning for Mythbusters. I was pretty sure the machine was clean as I run a virus scan every day to get rid of the crap I get in spam and from web sites. I re-booted the machine and all was fine. Goodness only knows how non-technical people cope.
Install Linux….
Ya know… this never happens on my Mac ;>
Thank you, smartarses. As I have explained before, I have Windows machines because I have clients who want me to develop software for Windows machines. If you can find me alternative work then I will consider only using the Linux machines I have. Until then I gotta eat. I am not prepared to sacrifice my livelihood to satisfy your religious beliefs about the purity of operating systems. OK?
*snerk* Fair enough.
So then the next (and far more useful comment) is what version of the OS are you using? Having just spent a year breaking MSN sites (international as well as US) inside various OS’s for The Evil Empire, we discovered some bits of info that let to more stable systems (XPSP2, FF over IE, McAfee over most other options — basic stuff, but useful and not everyone has all the updates.) For all the PITA MS can be, the updates are (usually) worthwhile and (tend) to lead toward more stability.
XPSP2, and fully up to date. I believe I’m correct in saying that DEP was only introduced in that version, and for sure I’m not going to be running Vista on anything mission critical.
I use Firefox for day-to-day browsing, but obviously need to have a wide range of browsers installed for testing purposes.
I wouldn’t touch McAfee with the proverbial ten-foot sterilized bargepole, but that’s nothing to do with their software (or their sponsorship of the Raiders). It is simply because I refuse to do business with a company who, when their online licensing system fails to work, says, “that’s tough, you’ll just have to buy another copy of the software.” Kevin and I went over to AVG a while back because Norton was so bad, and so expensive. We are fairly happy with it.
I’ve been programming microcomputers since about 1980 and I’ve used a wide range of operating systems, including one we wrote ourselves. They all have their good points and bad points. Most modern ones suffer from having grown through accretion rather than design, and the need to support a vast range of legacy software. They are all going to have problems. Consequently I tend to judge them as much on what happens when you have problems as on the sort of problems you have. You can live with a mildly unstable operating system if it is easy to find out what is wrong and receiver when you do have problems. But in this particular case Windows is telling the user that its own software is a dangerous virus, which is mildly ridiculous.
I knew you had a history (and that the question I was asking was mildly ridiculous) — but I had no idea you’d built your own OS. That’s impressive, lady ;>.
As for McAfee — never having run into that issue, I didn’t realize their CS rivaled our worst bank up north (Washington Mutual). As Norton is even more a result of accretion than design and I agree with you, it sucks beyond all imagining these days, McAfee was the obvious (and easy) choice. What it AVG?
I did say “we” built our own O/S. I had very little part in it, being the junior-most programmer. Martin Hoare, on the other hand…
(I did once build my own limited windowing system because early versions of Windows were such rubbish, but that’s another story.)
AVG is a German software company. Details here.
Well the Germans might own the majority of the stock now, but AVG is originally Czech. The main offices are still here in Brno. . .
Whoops, my apologies to all of my Czech readers!
I suspect the mistake might have been that the online purchasing service they use is based in Germany.
Anyway, it is a good product, and I’m very happy with it.
I’ll add my endorsement to that of Cheryl’s. AVG is nowhere near as intrusive as McAfee. It runs without a lot of fuss and bother, doesn’t seem to want to put tendrils of itself into everything I do, doesn’t destroy my two computers’ usability when it’s running, and appears to be protecting me quite effectively. (I’ve had to turn the firewall off to do direct-connect games — two machines playing Locomotion — but when I do that, the computer isn’t connected to the internet anyway.)
On the commercial side, have you considered Sophos? Where I work we use their engine to scan incoming email. Don’t know how much we pay for it or how much it would cost a single end user.
On the free side I’ve heard good things about ClamAV. There is now a version for Windows.
George
I remember looking at it a while back and not being very impressed, but I’m afraid I can’t remember why now. AVG does a free virus-scan-only product, which I think is a good thing. There are still way too many unprotected PCs out there.
Excellent! Thanks all — I have some research to go do now ;>. I know it was only a tangent, but it was a *really* useful one for me !