Worst monthe ever

Hello - we're a 3 pc household & we go for long stretches with no major problems. But this last month was the worst ever. The pc's all got hit hard with various viruses & malware - actually while we were sleeping and not even touching the pc's & all windows closed. It happened several times. Once I finally got rid of all the junk this crap left it's calling card & it screwed up lots of settings.
Anyway - here's what I've been doing - Avast AV, Ad aware for spyware, CCleaner to keep things tidy, and built in firewall. Everything is kept updated and defragged, we don't do file sharing either.
This was not enough - what else should I be doing to keep things running smooth? I can't handle another month like the last one - at least not for a year or so! Thank you v much! D

 

with 2 teens I had to find a solution to keep what is happening to you, from being my story. I would add Sandboxie and you should be fine.

 

Thank you - how'd you know I have 2 teens? D

 

I would be very interested in further details because it has always been my understanding that some sort of user interaction was required for these exploits. For starters, were you behind a router? Did you have a software firewall installed? What sort of Internet connection do you have?

 

....and i always thought this was the one of the safest way to keep a pc clean

 

Sandboxie or Geswall would be great for you, I tend to prefer Geswall over anything else available but that is just my opinion and they are all great. Alongside this make sure you image your hard drive regularly and to an external HDD or some other external media. Drive Imaging is probably the most important step to take.

 

Highly recommended reading here.

 

Another option would be DefenseWall. Anything that was accidentally downloaded would be trapped in its sandbox. Version 3 will include a firewall. The latest Beta of DW v3.00 works fine with Widows XP firewall. Also, WinPatrol PLUS, It will detect anything that tries and run. It has a large online data base to check to see if anything is malicious. Maybe add an extra free scanner to check now and then. Good luck.

 

Someone must've crawled out of bed in the middle of the night.
Any sleepwalkers?

Seriously though, you need to clarify this.

 

Maybe what you had on your machine waits for a period of inactivity before it does it's stuff?

You need:

1. clean installs
2. disk imaging (make images right after the clean installs, regularly thereafter and before/after installing new software)
3. run internet programs in a sandbox (ie. SandboxIE)
4. maybe run Hitman Pro once in awhile
5. make sure you're running operating systems that are fully patched and if installing XP, make sure the service packs are integrated.