There is an exploit for Internet Explorer out right now where any website can install anything it wants onto your computer. While visiting websites you may notice your virus scanner going off as a website tries to install a virus-laden dll. Until IE gets its security flaws fixed you might want to check out the mozilla-based browser, Firefox.
Short feature list:
- Small size: 4.7MB
- No need to install just run from wherever you have it.
- Tabbed browsing. Run multiple pages within the same browser instance so you don’t fill up your task bar while visiting websites.
- Built in pop-up blocker.
My dad left his computer with me this week since he’s been having a lot of trouble with it. His master boot record had two entries, one of which would not load windows and would just crash at the command line. In other words, during load the prompt would ask which of two install of Windows to load. Unfortunately, this was the default entry and with a USB keyboard, since USB keyboards will often not power up and work until Windows is loaded, he could not select the correct boot record. So, in researching this issue I learned a new thing that you too may benefit from: necessary entries from the boot record or boot.ini. One problem down and a few more to go.
After this, I loaded up and ran Ad-Aware 6.0 with its updated reference files to locate and remove any spyware. I found hundreds of bot programs and crap clogging his system. The “Program Files” directory was loaded with virus exe’s. This is a good thing to run every so often if you’re on a Windows machine.