Spyware And Windows 2000

by Dennis
(Arizona)

A close friend of mine called with a computer problem that we have been struggling with for a few days now. I have been having to work with her over the phone and her computer knowledge is not that great.

She was on a site when a pop up warned her that her computer might be infected and she should click the button to fix it. Of course she did. My daughter had done the same thing on my computer not that long ago and fixing the problem was easy. I restored the computer to an earlier date and problem solved. That was an XP system with restore capability.

This is a 2000 system without a restore function. Why did they leave out this amazing tool?

I had my fiend start the computer in safe mode, connect online and download a spy-ware scan tool. She ran the scan and was able to delete and/or quarantine about a dozen or so infected files.

She is now able to start the computer normally and has updated her firewall utility and run a couple of more virus scans.

The computer is not as fast as it was and I still think it might be infected. How can I be sure this virus is completely off her system?

Answer

You're right about system restore, it is a great feature, I'm glad all the new versions of Windows has it. After running any antivirus or antispyware and you find any object that has done damage to a computer system. System restore will usually fix it right back up.

If you have already run a couple of checks to see if everything has been removed, you've done great. The problem with viruses and spyware are sometimes they already get seated to deeply into your system. Think of it this way, if you were to have a heart attack and make a great recovery a part of you would never be the same. You wouldn't have the same endurance and power you once had. Chances are there was some permanent damage in both cases.

My personal choice in virus, spyware and firewall protection is Zonealarm. It's reasonably priced, runs without using a ton of system resources, and the best part for your friend, it uses very little user input to do a very good job. It may be something you're interested in.

Any time you've recently had a virus really mess up your system, after you've done the cleanup with virus software, do a backup, instructions to that can be found here.

If the system speed is really annoying, after a backup, it may be time to think about a re-installing Windows. Just make sure you have your Windows setup disk, and the CD-Key. Windows install help can be found here.