The best Anti-Virus/Anti-Ad Software
 

I have a real doozy of a spyware earlier tonight. It disabled my task manager, it closes my internet whenever I typed "virus" or "scan" in anything (yes, it nearly froze as I typed those words), and Ad Aware constantly freezes when it scans for things. My monitor will get staticy, my homepage changes....basically it's a whole lot of shit.

So I downloaded a french antivirus software from mininova. It helped a lot, but only temporary. The crap is still in my windows folder, and there's still a lot of spyware detected. So I need your opinion on what the best anti-virus/anti-spyware program there is, so I can fix this mess and be safe from any future infestations. I could really use your help here.

Tried booting into Safe Mode and running things? I am fairly sure you know how, but if not, slam on F8 while Windows is booting and select Safe Mode when it asks how you want to start Windows.

Beyond that, I tend to rely upon the trio of AVG, Spybot, and Spyware Blaster (all free)--beyond that always seems to be frivilous for my needs.

Trend Micro has some great online scanners, got rid of a few things that Spybot, Adaware & ZoneAlarm Security Suite were unable to.

http://www.trendmicro.com/spyware-scan/default.asp

http://www.trendmicro.com/cwshredder/default.asp

http://www.trendmicro.com/hc_intro/default.asp

The best way to ax all your spyware and viruses is to scan the HDD from an OS not affected by the viruses. Run a combination of AVG, Ad-Aware, Spybot, Windows Defender and whatver else you can get your hands on. If you do this from a separate drive, you should be able to root out most, if not all the malware, since it can't defend itself when not running with the infected OS.

I'm a big fan of AVG as well.

Try Hitman Pro is ultimate spyware remover and use ZoneAlarm for firewall

It's smarter to use more than one scanning Utility. Some programs pick up different faults as compared to others. IE: Spybot & Ad-aware. Completely different results sometimes.

Anyways, I suggest the following. Ewido (I usually use this FIRST, cleans up a lot of problems), Windows Defender, Ad-aware, Spybot Search & Destroy, and use HouseCall Trendmicro for a virus scanner. (http://housecall.trendmicro.com/) If you can that is.

If this problem persists I suggest doing a Windows Repair. Last resort but it fixes the essentials.