I really thought I'd beaten malware, and so far on my own PC's I have. Running Vista in limited user mode is very safe, if, the end user is careful. Enter one teenager running Vista, as a limited user as I set up their machine. No problem, if something tries to install just don't let it. The screen will darken and ask you for a password, just stop what your doing, and log off. Well what works for some people won't work for others, especially teenagers, who love adding pictures and screen savers and watching youtube ect.
So she sheepishly calls for me and tells me that she thinks she "let something install onto her computer". I take a look, and sure enough, a large window in the middle of her screen that looks similar to the McAffe antivirus. This program is called PC-Antispyware, and it's telling me that I'm infected with some bogus virus, and for 14.95 it will fix it for me. Sure thing I thought, infected yes I am, by you!
So I start the routine, running antivirus, antispyware, making registry changes. Rebooting doing it all in safe mode. After a few hours I thought I had it.
Of course I didn't have it, it still had me. These things are almost always impossible to rid of these days. After a half hour or so the PC-Antispyware window popped up again. After that some other bogus virus scan window appeared, not only do they infect you, then they have to invite their friends to the party. At this point there really is only one option: Nuke the Bastards!
I knew it would come to this, the malware these days is just way to dangerous. A clean install is good for the soul, a nice clean machine runs great, and it will get rid of all the crapware that comes with PC's these days.
Save it, this will be a pain in the ass, but it has to be done!
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