Ramblings, opinions, and general meanderings from the Deep South

Monday, April 21, 2003

New week, beautiful morning, birds are singing and the sun is shining! WILL YOU UPDATE YOUR ANTI-VIRUS DEFINITIONS TODAY???!!! If you don't, take your whine elsewhere. My pcs check for anitvirus updates EVERYDAY! I recently had to heal two machines plagued with the opaserv virus. This thing is a nightmare to an unprotected winders 98 machine. Has to do with ports 137, 138, & 139 being open and the way the virus re-infects. Fall of 2002 it appeared and has reappeared in several varieties. It will show up after fdisk and format! It does not stay on the drive but is so prevelant on the net that there are unaware machines sitting everywhere waiting to reinfect you. My youngest son-in-law and I fought this for days. He'd reformat and go to windows update site (have u been there lately? they have security updates that are all but mandatory!) and the next time the machine booted the virus would be back in all its glory. Left alone and not healed it may eventually shut down your hard drive leaving a message that you are running illegal software and contact 1800PIRACY, etc. Thank you, http://www.computing.net and Brad Petersen for all the research and postings about this pain in the butt virus. Most at this site seem to think the anti-virus software community is ignoring it. So the next time the anti-virus software on your computer wants to update, go get a cup of coffee, walk the dog, embrace your children and let this wonderful protection process finish! Then, RUN A VIRUS SCAN!!!!!!!!!

I personally use and recommend AVG. It's free for the basic version at http://www.grisoft.com and easy to install. A scan runs everyday on my machines and it is the only anti-virus software used. Some folks don't like it, but I usually know about new virus infections before anyone not using AVG. Norton's, which is now Symantec, is good if you use only, I repeat only, their antivirus program. Beware installing the internet security tools or utilities. I have seen both wreak havoc on networks and shy away from most of their products because of these experiences. The internet security software from Symantec shut down a network and it took forever to remove that load of barnyard material. If you have had different experiences please let me know.

Most virus writing script kitties are pimply, insecure, little-bitty, unwashed, grunting satan-worshippers. They need to get on that jet with the hollywood liberal bunch and land in North Korea. Sometime in the future i'll drop my reserve attitude and tell you how I really feel about this bunch!

No comments: