How to identify Viruses

As per someone's suggestion, I installed Sygate Personal Firewall on my PC. The ability to manually block all applications is handy, but the problem is I'm not sure which applications may be viral, or which are normal windows-based stuff that I should be allowing. Some of the names are self-explainable, like AIM or Realplayer, but there are others like winlogs.exe, LEXPPS.exe, and so on that I have no idea what it's for, or if I need it.

So I need a checklist of sorts of common virus names, so I can weed them out with this program. I just very recently had a problem where, after a minute from starting up, I couldn't access my taskbar or any of my desktop items (I would get an hourglass icon), and if I tried to restart, the Shutdown/Restart options are left blank, and all I can do is Log Off. Nasty little bugger.

For a virus scanner, I have NOD32. I also use Ad Aware. If there's anything else I should be using for added security, please let me know.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Simply Google the suspected filenames and it will usually direct you to a website like www.liutilities.com or www.neuber.com. There are many other websites and forums with information on the particular exe. Bear in mind that many viruses disguise their filenames to look like legitimate files, but you should inspect the directory of the file. For example, if the file is reported to be a system file but is not in the system32 folder, then it's likely that it is a virus.

Eset NOD32 is an excellent antivirus, and so as long as you keep it up to date whenever possible then no viruses should get through it. As for anti-spyware/malware, I would use as many programs as possible because each program will miss certain nasties.

There's nowhere I can't reach.