There are hundreds or even thousands of new viruses being created every day. That’s why anti-virus software updates itself on a daily basis. The best antivirus software will update itself multiple times a day. Even though daily updates occur, there is always a slight possibility that you could get infected. No matter how careful you are, it is possible. I even got infected by a virus a few weeks ago and the recovery process was interesting, difficult and innovative. The typical home user may not have been able to recover on their own from the type of infection I had.
Here is my Virus story…
On a typical evening, I sat down at the computer and decided to do some work . I first checked my email and then was going to do some testing on some antivirus and firewall software. After some emails came in, I got an error on my machine and didn’t really read it very well (mistake). It was an error in my Anti-virus and Firewall software caused by an infected email that made my antivirus software crash. At the time, I said to myself, Ok, I now need to reboot. I received a phone call and after the 30 minute phone call I hung up and went back to work… Not realizing that I never rebooted… I started surfing the internet looking for some Anti-virus software to test (Ironic). I found a free AV and proceeded to download it. After the download (and around 2:00 am) I noticed that the AV product I was using was no longer running and my computer was VERY slow and was getting browser errors in both Firefox and IE. I decided to reboot to fix the problem. My computer booted up and then this error came up: “Failure security options logon process has failed to create the security options dialog” and I there was no login box available. After a few reboots, with the same error, I decided to use my laptop to search for the error. To my surprise, there was many searches for this error but no real fix. I did find many posts about two anti-virus products being installed or problems with Norton Anti-virus. Neither of which I had. I even got the error when booting into safe mode. So… I tried to log into the machine remotely. I even got the error then. But… the console of the problem machine did come up with a login prompt to switch users as it was locked by default when a remote session starts. Since I always setup a local admin account ,I tried to log in locally. IT WORKED! I then uninstalled my anti-virus software and rebooted. The machine came up without errors and I could login successfully. I re-installed my anti-virus software, updated it and then ran a FULL SCAN of the computer. It found 4 virus threats that it removed. One was in the “Free” antivirus software I downloaded (so be careful).
So, what should you do to protect yourself before you get infected by a virus?
- First, make sure you create a local account on your computer that has Administrator rights. This Technet article will show you how to create a local admin account. Don’t use this account. Keep it as a fail safe account.
- Become familiar with your anti-virus software and make sure you have the vendors login and password information along with your activation codes.
- Make sure your Security Software has the following: Anti-virus protection, Anti-Spyware protection, good email protection, a two way firewall (to stop outbound traffic that is not authorized) and peer to peer protection.
- Check your status of your Antivirus and Firewall software software.
- Purchase your antivirus security software from one of the top vendors on the internet. We have a list of antivirus firewall software on our main page.
- Backup your documents and files to an external disk or online backup service so you have documents available in case of a failure you can’t recover from.
- Setup “Restore Points” and create a restore point on a regular basis and (ALWAYS) before you install software. Using restore points are an easy way to recover from a mistake, poorly written software or a virus.
If you have a similar problem, write down the error you receive and then use another computer to search for the error. Usually, these errors are common and easily fixable.
By the way, I’m no longer using the AV software that crashed. It was installed for testing purposes and also not recommended on this site either.
Antivirus Security Admin
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