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Tuesday, November 25, 2008

You'd think I'd know by now. I downloaded a virus... I executed it... it blew up in my face. What a mess it made. Actually, this story is kind of ironic.

I have been using Norton's antivirus programs for what seems like forever now. Back in the early 90s when I first bought a computer for university, the AV to get was Norton and I stuck with them all this time.

2nd part to this story ~ I bought Roger a new computer for Xmas (early Xmas gift). It came with Vista, which of course I knew it would and I felt it was hi-time to learn Vista. Yes I have heard of every negative comment about Vista, but whatever, new computers today come with it and at worst, if we don't like it, we still have a couple of weeks to return it. So far I like Vista.

3rd part to this story ~ With Roger's new computer comes Norton 360, but it's only the 'trial' version and it's good for 60 days at which point you have to activate it (which means - buy it). Now the Norton software I have is good for my XP but it's an older version which isn't suitable for Vista, so there was no point in loading it up. So I searched the net, read here and there and found that BitDefender is the best AV out there, so I decided to torrent a copy.

4th part to this story ~ yes torrent it. I thought ok, I'll just download a copy of BitDefender and I'll be fine. Now I've downloaded several programs with torrents and never had a problem but this time I simply fucked up.

When you change antiviruses - you need to remove the first AV before adding the new AV... and that leaves you vulnerable. For some reason that night when I downloaded the BitDefender torrent, I wasn't paying attention, and I downloaded one which had no comments attached to it (comments which state whether it's safe or not to download). I just downloaded 'a' copy... so when I went to execute it... and since I removed Norton... well it turned out to be a virus.

01234.exe

45353.exe

79432.exe

Everywhere... all over my system... so yes, I'm an idiot.

Anyhow, I've been spending the past couple of days moving over all my files, reformatting this beast and I'm now in the process of reconfigurating my system. That's where I've been the past few days so I'm catching up and will get back to answering my emails and messages.

ps - I decided to buy BitDefender. I looked around and it seems that torrent copies of antiviruses are just huge pains in the asses, so instead of worrying, I just bought a copy which is good for 3 computers. Therefore Roger's new Vista box and my old XP box are protected... fuck you virus makers.

pss - that chest in the image belongs to GilBear (galleries). No it wasn't a virus that attacked him, nor is it blood for that matter. It's wax. Click here to see the pic.