OnCall IT Solutions's blog

I was called up by a client today because their computer wouldn't boot up. And I'm not talking out one of those easily identifiable hardware problems of the system will not turn on or some such. No this was much more interesting. It would boot up, seem to be working for all of 10 seconds and then restart. Now 10 seconds isn't a lot of time to troubleshoot a problem, but I managed enough done that I could turn off the automatic reboot feature enabled to see the glorious blue screen.

Yes I mean glorious. You see these blue screens provide technicians with a whole host of information as to what's actually going wrong on your computer. You may think it looks like just a bunch of numbers, but to a technician it tells us exactly what is going wrong. So I went about my usual procedure of trying to identify what was causing this particular kernel mode error.

I rebooted in safe mode; I restored the last known good configuration; I rolled the system back with system restore; nothing seemed to want to work -- I would keep getting the reboots. I was starting to think this might actually be a hardware problem.  It wasn't out of the question; hardware problems can cause blue screens quite often. I was about to call  this a memory error based on what the blue screen was telling me. Luckily I stayed with it just a little bit longer.

A pretty good practice to get into when trying to fix a problem, is turning off the antivirus software; so I did that but it still didn't work.  I uninstalled antivirus software instead. Well what do you know? It worked! In this case it was AVG. Now this isn't unheard of for antivirus software to interfere with your computer in such a drastic way. This can occur with Norton, McAfee, and a host of other very popular programs.

This blog isn't to be a technical source for how to repair these problems but more to point out what could be causing it. The next time you encounter a really strange blue screen try uninstalling your antivirus software (you can always reinstall later), it just may save you an awful lot of time and trouble. And if it was your antivirus software, I'd replace it with AVIRA, available from www.free-AV.com.

Happy computing

One of the questions I most often asked is what antivirus software to get for a computer. There are a lot on the market and a great many are simply not worthwhile at all. Especially with the major ones, Norton and McAfee. These two will often come preinstalled on your computer from your manufacturer. Do yourself a favor and uninstall these right away.

 Now there are a number of good products out there, some of which are purchasable and some are actually free. If you feel more comfortable having a purchased one -- I would recommend VIPRE by Sunbelt software. This is a great product that combines not only antivirus but anti-spyware as well. You can buy combination products like this from a number of companies. What I like about VIPRE, is that unlike the others, there is almost no negative effect on your system performance. In fact, I have run many products from reputable companies that once you turn on their anti-spyware software, your system will slow to a crawl. This just doesn't happen with VIPRE. Now having no effect on your system isn't worth much if it doesn't find the viruses -- this one does. I run a large number of scans with a variety of products and there are only three that I feel comfortable running. One is VIPRE, one is Kapersky, in the last is AVIRA. The first two you can buy in stores or from resellers, AVIRA is actually a free download. You can buy the professional version, but really I don't see any real it works just fine.

Now there is one exception, it is only free for personal use not business. But even for business use it's only about $25. VIPRE and Kapersky are priced about the same as well.

To understand what the best antivirus is, you need to read through their marketing and realize when the truth is not always the truth. For example many companies will claim 99 point whatever percent effectiveness in finding viruses, and if you take a look at the difference between 99.1 and 99.9 it seems very small. But what it's looking at is how effectively will find all viruses that have ever existed. Most of the viruses that were around even three years ago or older are now no longer in circulation, and quite frankly if it couldn't find those it would really not be very effective at all. The threats to your computer are the viruses that are released today. How well does your antivirus software react to new threats? How would you feel if you found out that your brand-new antivirus software only detected 35% of new viruses? Would you feel very a protected? No? Then don't use Norton. You probably wouldn't want to hear about a product only caught 25%, so stay away from McAfee. You have a really good one though don't you? That free will and a friend recommended -- AVG? It managed to find 45%. Want to guess the highest rated one? Yup, it was AVIRA - at 69%. Now you're probably thinking 69% is not that great, and you're right, it isn't. Independent lab testing rated the highest, so right now it's the best that's out there. So what can you do? Run a suite of products. My particular cocktail that I like to run consists of AVIRA, Malwarebytes, and Spybot Search and Destroy. 

Will running all of these protect you 100%? No. Nothing can. But it will definitely limit how much damage can occur. The nice thing about these three is they are all free and they are all very, very effective. So what happens when something does slip by? Your best bet is to take it to a professional and have them clean it. You can tell they're professional if their first instinct is NOT to simply reinstall your computer. This is an amateurish approach and shows a lack of knowledge of how to deal with viruses. A lot of computer technicians try to maximize their time by shortcutting and doing the "simple fixes". As far as you the end-user goes, you usually end up with lost data.

If you would like to know more about protecting yourself from viruses you can contact me at help@oncall4you.com. You can download the products I mentioned at:
www.free-av.com
www.malwarebytes.org
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/home/index.html .