You might want to try something like Avira. It is one of the more lightweight ones, AFAIK. I am old school and prefer to run on-demand checkers.classicgamelover85 wrote:I uninstalled my AV again. Slows the computer down. LOL well anyways. This is how I sink my boat, how do you sink yours? Nobody can claim they've been without computer problems, even if they had AV software installed, everyone has sunken their ship before--either by accident or on purpose. Come on now, lets confess... be honest.
You are right on mistakes. Interestingly, not all online viruses use the direct route. I've noticed icons for things I've never installed before. But rather than tracing them back to the files and deleting the shortcuts involved, I was too curious for my own good. Oops. If you see any link for a seeming "utility" you never installed, gut it out, don't run it. Don't just remove the shortcut, but manually find the files and delete them, and I would not trust its uninstaller, assuming it even has one. Then take other measures (spyware and AV scans, preferably multiple different ones, hardening the browser, etc).
Combofix is a good tool for certain infections, but it can hose your ability to get online. If that happens, take a note of what all was deleted from the logs or copy them to a non-monitored drive, then run system restore. After that, manually make the changes if possible. Generally, it is advised to let an online adviser help you with that tool and similar, unless you really know what you are doing.