Virus & Worm Advice New Avast Free User

[rxtxau]

I've just installed Avast as free as a home user.  I've not used it before although I installed it on my Parents' machine a while ago.

I've been using Panda AntiVirus with Zone Alarm free Firewall & Microsoft AntiSpyware.  I use Spyware Blaster & run AdAware SE and Spybot S&D daily.  Weekly I use more than one of the free online virus testers.

This is an XP Pro system with only the Admin account setup because of problems with privileges otherwise.

I started noticing somethings just didn't seem to be running as fast as they did and tiny discrepancies in how they ran.  I removed Panda and reinstalled it and that didn't help so I removed it and installed Avast instead.   I did run the Avast online check as well as three others first and they all found nothing.

When I installed Avast, I was horrified when it said that it found 2 worms and 4 examples each of 2 different virus.  I didn't take down their names unfortunately.  I have seen the info on false positives from Panda and from memory some of those files seem to correlate but some certainly don't.

Today, an ISP tech gave me a link to McAfee Stinger, which is a special removal tool.  I ran it and it found W32/Sdbot.worm   

The fact that trojans / worms have been found is a real concern to me although I'm only on a dial up account.  I'm intending to get a new DVD burner this coming week (only got a CD burner and my files are getting too large) and do a complete backup and reinstall but I'd like to do a slipstream of XP Pro, SP2 and Updates first as I was hit last time I did a reinstall whilst I was downloading the updates.  That took about 6 hours of swearing to fix and I don't relish that again.

Any other suggestions?

Regards,
Brian

[kamulko]

Welcome!

You can see the names of the malwares in the Avast! virus chest (or you have deleted them?). You don't say if you have scheduled a scan at reboot or not. You know, this is the better option in order to clean your machine. About your storage idea: my suggestion is (after the complete clean of the OS) to buy an external hard drive and save on it an image of your system; today this type of device is not too expensive and is more useful than other types of storage devices.

[DavidR]

There have been known false positives associated with panda not encrypting some of its virus signature files. However, to confirm or deny this we need to know the virus name and its location example (C:\windows\system32\infected-filename.xxx)?

[rxtxau]

I did see that article on the Panda files and mentioned that but I'm sure that not all of them were those listed.  Also, I'm conserned that the McAfee Stinger utility found that worm since Avast has been on the system.  I know it could have been there first and somehome come back but that is a concern.

I deleted all the original files so I don't have a list of them.

When I go into the chest now, I find some system files in there.  Is that right?

I've got a second hard drive (it and the main drive are samsung 80GB) but I haven't formatted it and put it in yet otherwise I'd use it as a back up.  What is the best way to set up a second drive?

Regards,
Brian.

[DavidR]

It depends on if you sent any files there, what the files are and where they are in the chest, it has different sections.

You can format it from with in windows (assuming that it is detected by your bios and windows explorer), but one large 80GB partition is a bit unwieldy, I would tend to have at least two partitions and probably three. For that you will need something like Partition Magic (not free).