Sunbelt Software's Vipre Anti-virus program is our anti-virus software of choice but don't be fooled, one anti-virus program is never enough. Vipre recommends, and we concur, that you should also run an anti-malware program such as Malwarebytes at least once a week and whenever your machine starts behaving oddly.
We worked on a machine this week that had its ability to run programs knocked out. When ever we tried to open Vipre or Malwarebytes to run a scan, the programs would not run. Other types of files were not affected, only "executable" files including all our internet browsers. These program files end with the extension .exe --this extention tells the computer that this is a program that needs to execute. A quick Google search let us know that this was probably an e-mail worm call Sircam.
We were able to finessed the machine into opening and running Malwarebyte. The worm causing the problem was found along with other malware. We ran Vipre to be sure we got everything and all the bad stuff was gone. Malwarebytes saves the day!!
You might ask, if Malwarebytes saved the day, why use Vipre at all? The answer is that Vipre is a great sentry program that scans efficiently and unobtrusively in the background as you use your computer and can run a deep scan of your machine when you are not using it. Both programs are good but overlap is what we want to keep our machines "clean." There is so much bad stuff out there that no one program can be expected to do it all, as much as we'd like it to.
I run Vipre daily though my machine is almost always "clean." But I have recently started going to potentially troublesome sites like Facebook and Yahoo Games --just got into playing Bejeweled which requires Internet Explorer (a favorite target of the cyber bad guys). I have noticed that Vipre is starting to find stuff to clean up on my machine. I have to admit that I do not run Malwarebytes as often as I should. I resolve today to start running it weekly.
You can get Malwarebytes (freeware and payware versions are available) at http://www.malwarebytes.org/