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[mosaic]

I'm sitting here at my gf's parents computer and it's mucked to heck with ad-ware, popup generators, and all sorts of trojans. I have no trouble getting rid of this crap using ad-aware and various tools, but what I need is some solution to safeguard this from happening every 6 months.

They have Norton Internet Utilities, and it seems to have a decent personal firewall among its other tools. Problem is, I need a program that will automatically block adware, malware, popups, and known questionable web sites with a minimum of user interaction. These people are not PC savvy, and the computer is used by more people than a friggen $3 ho. Between websites that try to install trojans and the crap their young daughter / son download (WinMX, imesh, etc), it never fails that every 6 months I'm here ripping out a dozen different trojans, data miners, and ad programs.

I wish the solution was to tell 'em to stop installing illegal programs, stop installing music pirate programs, and to stop clicking "yes" on every damn window -- but that's just not possible.

So, anyone out there know of a program or a suite that can at least give the parents a fighting chance to keep this damn PC semi-clean?

 

[DaCocoBrova]

Zone Alarm Pro, McAfee Virsus Scan, Spybot in conjunction w/ a browser other than IE.

Oh, and use profiles.

 

[Error Macro]

I use Norton Internet Security 2003 (firewall and antivirus; 2004 edition is junk), plus Ad-Aware to keep my PC running in tip-top shape. I also use IE as it is the fastest and easiest to use for me.

 

[DaCocoBrova]

You should really get to know gpedit.msc. You can easily customize your browser (IE/Avant) to do just about anything. You can restrict installs, downloads... Change the header of your browser to say anything you want, add an image to your tool bar buttons. Many possibilities

 

[Deg]

You should really get to know gpedit.msc. You can easily customize your browser (IE/Avant) to do just about anything. You can restrict installs, downloads... Change the header of your browser to say anything you want, add an image to your tool bar buttons. Many possibilities

or go better and get Opera.

 

[impirius]

mosaic: I feel your pain. I just spent about 6 hours of work today on a single Vaio PC... this thing was more loaded with spyware and viruses than any I've ever seen. I'm amazed that it even booted up. Even if you could get past the myriad spyware pop-ups, winlogon.exe decided to take 99% of the CPU time after about ten minutes of uptime. After many reboots, Norton, AVG, Housecall, Ad-Aware, Spybot, CWShredder, VX2Finder, Hijack This, and Recovery Console, it's finally *almost* ready to go.

Here's my ideal setup for now... still tweaking it, as it'll probably be what we put on the computers we send out:

AVG (resident shield, scheduled scan, and auto-update enabled)
Ad-Aware and Spybot on the desktop
CWShredder and VX2Finder tucked away in the Start menu
Firefox as the default browser
Thunderbird as the default email client

If it's not Windows XP, Zone Alarm will go on as well. (XP's firewall is decent enough... not worth getting lots of calls about ZA blocking programs)
Set up profiles so that people aren't always logged in as an Administrator