windows 7 won't boot (missing/corrupt boot loader) reinstalled windows,same problem

[Mike S]

I have a neighbor who has a windows 7 desktop, she told me it wouldn't
boot, and even after repeated attempts to repair itself (the repair
utility reports that it was successful) it still won't boot, after
several attempts to repair itself we decided to reinstall windows from
the hidden partition (she didn't get a CD or DVD with the computer).
Windows installed and booted, installed several updates, I installed
Avast, OpenOffice, Chrome, Firefox and went home. A day later the
computer is having the same problem. While I was there I made sure SMART
was enabled, so next time I'm there I"ll boot into Ubuntu from a CD and
see what SMART reports.

Is this a common problem with windows 7? Any suggestions about how to
diagnose this, if SMART is not reporting errors?

TIA,
Mike

 

[Rob]

I have a neighbor who has a windows 7 desktop, she told me it wouldn't
boot, and even after repeated attempts to repair itself (the repair
utility reports that it was successful) it still won't boot, after
several attempts to repair itself we decided to reinstall windows from
the hidden partition (she didn't get a CD or DVD with the computer).
Windows installed and booted, installed several updates, I installed
Avast, OpenOffice, Chrome, Firefox and went home. A day later the
computer is having the same problem. While I was there I made sure SMART
was enabled, so next time I'm there I"ll boot into Ubuntu from a CD and
see what SMART reports.

Is this a common problem with windows 7? Any suggestions about how to
diagnose this, if SMART is not reporting errors?

TIA,
Mike

Try a new HDD

 

[Char Jackson]

Try a new HDD

Just skip right to that, before doing any troubleshooting?

To the OP: find out what "doesn't boot" actually means. By itself,
that doesn't tell us anything meaningful.

When attempting to boot the PC, which steps does it accomplish? Where
does it fall over and what indications does it give when it gets to
that point? Does Safe Mode act differently? What's happening on
screen? What did the Ubuntu Live CD reveal?

 

[Rob]

I have a neighbor who has a windows 7 desktop, she told me it wouldn't boot, and even after repeated attempts to repair itself (the repair utility reports that it was successful) it still won't boot, after several attempts to repair itself we decided to reinstall windows from the hidden partition (she didn't get a CD or DVD with the computer). Windows installed and booted, installed several updates, I installed Avast, OpenOffice, Chrome, Firefox and went home. A day later the computer is having the same problem. While I was there I made sure SMART was enabled, so next time I'm there I"ll boot into Ubuntu from a CD and see what SMART reports.

Is this a common problem with windows 7? Any suggestions about how to diagnose this, if SMART is not reporting errors?

TIA,
Mike

Hi Mike,
Not a common problem with Windows 7 as such, but it is a common problem
to have an intermittent hardware fault which causes issues like this (in
any OS.)

The first thing to check is the RAM. Download memtest86+ and make
a boot CD to test that on another PC:
http://www.memtest.org/

If the RAM checks out as OK, the next most likely suspect is the
hard drive. Find out what make it is and download the manufacturers
diagnostic (again, create a boot CD from the .ISO file, if available.)
Run the full test (quick test will be useless for this particular issue.)

Another common problem is a marginally bad power supply, but the only
way to test that is by substitution.

HTH

 

[Paul]

I have a neighbor who has a windows 7 desktop, she told me it wouldn't
boot, and even after repeated attempts to repair itself (the repair
utility reports that it was successful) it still won't boot, after
several attempts to repair itself we decided to reinstall windows from
the hidden partition (she didn't get a CD or DVD with the computer).
Windows installed and booted, installed several updates, I installed
Avast, OpenOffice, Chrome, Firefox and went home. A day later the
computer is having the same problem. While I was there I made sure SMART
was enabled, so next time I'm there I"ll boot into Ubuntu from a CD and
see what SMART reports.

Is this a common problem with windows 7? Any suggestions about how to
diagnose this, if SMART is not reporting errors?

TIA,
Mike

And if you check the Avast logs or quarantine folder or whatever,
what do you find ? Maybe Avast yanked something important ?

In this thread, they refer to a "chest", and Avast does have a log viewer,
but they don't mention whether a simple text file is available with log info
in it (for times when Windows is dead). You could at least locate the chest
folder and check its contents.

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=42687.0

Does the user know how to do a clean shutdown ? Does she just
"turn off the power" ? This wouldn't normally hurt the machine,
as NTFS has a journal and the file system should be relatively
robust. And since you've reinstalled, the file system probably
got repaired at that point (the installer probably runs
chkdsk if it isn't starting with a clean partition).

You also have the option of doing an offline malware scan, with
the 196MB CD here. Just in case something nasty is lurking there.
On my machine, this takes an hour or two to scan C:, so you
have to allocate enough time for this. (Check it's working,
then walk away until done.) The scanner will pop up dialogs, but
the dialogs shouldn't prevent it from running to completion.
Then you can check the "report", to see what it found.

http://support.kaspersky.com/faq/?qid=208282163

As far as I know, the BIOS "enable SMART" option, is there so
that the BIOS can check the SMART stats at POST. I don't think
the BIOS influences the OS ability to read SMART for itself.
There's not much point in the BIOS disabling it. It's not
a security hole or anything.

*******

I've had problems myself, when doing two things. One was fooling
around with the System Volume Information contents. Another was
attempting to make changes to the file system from a Linux LiveCD
(just doing file cleanup of non-system files).

I didn't do enough fault isolation, to determine exactly what I
shouldn't be doing. What seems to be key here, is Volume Shadow
Service, which does things like build System Restore points,
and it also is used for building live system images while the
OS is running. If VSS was disabled, my guess is at least in
my case, the OS would be a lot more stable (less breakable).
But I'm not sure how this scenario fits with your neighbor.
They're not likely to be doing the kinds of things I was doing.
They'd have to be dual booting Linux, and messing around with the
Win7 partition.

In a dual boot scenario, if you have WinXP and Win7 on the same
computer, the System Restore in WinXP should be turned off. As
they don't play nice with each other's SVI folders. It's
too bad WinXP doesn't come with a "only meddle with C: please"
setting, instead of destroying any new disk that gets
connected to the WinXP OS. As a consequence, I leave System
Restore turned off on WinXP, so I won't forget if I slave up
the drive from my Win7 machine.

*******

First step when you return to the neighbor, is burn that set
of recovery DVDs from the hidden partition. That's your
insurance. Not only do you burn the DVDs, you also "image"
them immediately and store them on some hard drive. If the
DVDs get "bit rot", you can then burn another set. This will
likely take half the day, before you even get down to business.
I think when my laptop burned the set, it did a "verify" of
the media afterwards. At one time, there were computers that
would blindly burn a set, only allow you to burn one set,
but not verify, and if the media was bad, you were screwed.

An alternative, is to image the entire drive, making sure that
the hidden partition is included in the backup.

Paul

 

[Ken Blake]

I have a neighbor who has a windows 7 desktop, she told me it wouldn't
boot, and even after repeated attempts to repair itself (the repair
utility reports that it was successful) it still won't boot, after
several attempts to repair itself we decided to reinstall windows from
the hidden partition (she didn't get a CD or DVD with the computer).
Windows installed and booted, installed several updates, I installed
Avast, OpenOffice, Chrome, Firefox and went home. A day later the
computer is having the same problem. While I was there I made sure SMART
was enabled, so next time I'm there I"ll boot into Ubuntu from a CD and
see what SMART reports.

Is this a common problem with windows 7? Any suggestions about how to
diagnose this, if SMART is not reporting errors?

It's almost certainly *not* a Windows 7 problem at all. It's very
likely a hardware problem.

It's less likely but it could also be a malware infection; she could
have gotten reinfected after reinstallation because whatever she did
to get reinfected the first time, she quickly redid after you left.

And note that if "she didn't get a CD or DVD with the computer," the
computer undoubtedly came with instructions to create a DVD from the
hidden recovery partition. That should be her first priority after she
gets it going again. If she doesn't do that and the drive fails, she
is left with nothing.

 

[Satanic Mechanic ©]

It's almost certainly *not* a Windows 7 problem at all. It's very
likely a hardware problem.

It's less likely but it could also be a malware infection; she could
have gotten reinfected after reinstallation because whatever she did
to get reinfected the first time, she quickly redid after you left.

And note that if "she didn't get a CD or DVD with the computer," the
computer undoubtedly came with instructions to create a DVD from the
hidden recovery partition. That should be her first priority after she
gets it going again. If she doesn't do that and the drive fails, she
is left with nothing.

why deal with all the trouble shooting that probably wont work. its
so much easier to just go buy a new pc and put the old one at the curb
for trash pickup.

 

[Michel S.]

I have a neighbor who has a windows 7 desktop, she told me it wouldn't
boot, and even after repeated attempts to repair itself (the repair
utility reports that it was successful) it still won't boot, after
several attempts to repair itself we decided to reinstall windows from
the hidden partition (she didn't get a CD or DVD with the computer).
Windows installed and booted, installed several updates, I installed
Avast, OpenOffice, Chrome, Firefox and went home. A day later the
computer is having the same problem. While I was there I made sure SMART
was enabled, so next time I'm there I"ll boot into Ubuntu from a CD and
see what SMART reports.

Is this a common problem with windows 7? Any suggestions about how to
diagnose this, if SMART is not reporting errors?

TIA,
Mike

HI,
1st thing to try and it's simple.

Reboot while tapping the "F8" key (tap, tap, tap,...) b4 Windows' normal
screen appears.
Multiple choices in black and white > Safe Mode.
Once in Windows, goto "Start" then "Run".
Type "msconfig.exe". (NO brackets)
Select "Boot" then "Advanced".
2 items to verify and adjust:

1.- Numbers of processors (really #'s of cores).It MAY be set at "1"
only on a multi-core CPU. There's is a "dropdown".

2.- Memory: Tick and activate "Maximum Memory": It's been known to be
set all the way down to 256 Mbs which of course will prevent normal
booting while giving you that "corrupt boot loader" warning.

Save the settings and exit from "msconfig".

Reboot.

P. Mike S.

 

[Mike S]

HI,
1st thing to try and it's simple.

Reboot while tapping the "F8" key (tap, tap, tap,...) b4 Windows' normal
screen appears.
Multiple choices in black and white > Safe Mode.
Once in Windows, goto "Start" then "Run".
Type "msconfig.exe". (NO brackets)
Select "Boot" then "Advanced".
2 items to verify and adjust:

1.- Numbers of processors (really #'s of cores).It MAY be set at "1"
only on a multi-core CPU. There's is a "dropdown".

2.- Memory: Tick and activate "Maximum Memory": It's been known to be
set all the way down to 256 Mbs which of course will prevent normal
booting while giving you that "corrupt boot loader" warning.

Save the settings and exit from "msconfig".

Reboot.

P. Mike S.

Thanks to everyone who posted. I just got back from the 2nd session with
the PC before seeing all of these great new posts, so I'm sorry if I
didn't check the things you all suggested before the 2nd system restore.

Previously I found several other people have had a reported boot loader
problem like this one, some had done system restores over 6 times, one
person thought it was possibly due to a Windows update and mentioned a
2GB limit of some sort.

I tried to boot from an Ubuntu CD, it froze, rebooted from Ubuntu with
minimum graphics support, it loaded then froze when I started looking
around, so I tried letting the machine boot Windows, it tried to repair
itself but this time it said it was unable to repair the problem. At
least that is a change.

I did a System Restore using the 2nd option (leave files intact),
disabled all updates, installed Avast and HDTune, which reported that
the HDD looked 100% OK.

If it happens again I'll check the Avast virus vault, reseat the RAM and
then run memtest.

I will go over again and make sure the # of processors and max memory
are set correctly, thanks for that tip.

Thanks again to all who posted.
Mike

 

[Leon Manfredi]

I have a neighbor who has a windows 7 desktop, she told me it wouldn't
boot, and even after repeated attempts to repair itself (the repair
utility reports that it was successful) it still won't boot, after
several attempts to repair itself we decided to reinstall windows from
the hidden partition (she didn't get a CD or DVD with the computer).
Windows installed and booted, installed several updates, I installed
Avast, OpenOffice, Chrome, Firefox and went home. A day later the
computer is having the same problem. While I was there I made sure SMART
was enabled, so next time I'm there I"ll boot into Ubuntu from a CD and
see what SMART reports.

Is this a common problem with windows 7? Any suggestions about how to
diagnose this, if SMART is not reporting errors?

TIA,
Mike

Lost my bookmarks, menus, everything, but the shell itself in Firefox, after a
program version UPGRADE, causing FF not to install correctly. Spent 2days and
sleepiness nites trying to figure this out.

First, consider removing and "reinstalling", that you may have installed, upgraded or
updated to! Next after that same results, downgrade like I did with Firefox, then
update back to the latest, like I did... Voila!!!!

P.S. Removing and reinstalling the latest version of FF did not work at first,
without going back to an earlier version that I kept handy... Also hope that this
gives You'ze all some ideas!

 

[Paul]

I tried to boot from an Ubuntu CD, it froze, rebooted from Ubuntu with
minimum graphics support, it loaded then froze when I started looking
around, so I tried letting the machine boot Windows, it tried to repair
itself but this time it said it was unable to repair the problem. At
least that is a change.

Doesn't this strike you as ominous ?

What does your spider sense tell you ? (Bad hardware)

I've had Ubuntu freeze or crash in a virtualized environment (within VPC2007),
but not on real physical hardware. The Linux kernel code for detection
of virtualization continues to be flaky (i.e. no one cares), which is
why it has problems in there.

A bad day for Linux, is when it can't get the network running. That
happens with things like a Broadcom chip using TG3 driver. I'd suspect
bad RAM, bad CPU, bad motherboard, or even a weak power supply, as
capable of tipping over Ubuntu.

Your CD could be bad of course. But since we have other data points
to work with (Windows going to hell), I don't know if I'd dwell
on the CD that much. On Knoppix LiveCD, there is a "testcd" option
at boot time, that allows verifying the checksums while the
thing loads, which is a handy feature if you suspect bad media.

*******

For another test case, power off the computer, unplug the data
connector on the hard drive (so Ubuntu can't see any hard drives,
only allowed to see optical drives), then boot and test. Does
Ubuntu work OK then ?

If so, you might want to download Seatools for DOS for a Seagate
hard drive, or whatever the equiv diagnostic is for a Western Digital
drive, and run the diagnostic and see what it reports.

The next time you can view SMART stats, look for "Reallocated Sector
Count" or "Current Pending Sector", in the Data column. I generally
replace drives when those go non-zero. Reallocated, is some measure
of how many sectors have been replaced by spare sectors. The Pending
one, is a measure of how many sectors are queued up for "special treatment",
the next time a write attempt is made to them, implying the sector
is flaky. If the sector fails, it goes into the Reallocated pile.
A growing Current Pending implies accumulating flakiness, and
perhaps the plating on the platter is failing. (This isn't a very
good picture but it's the first one I could link to.)

http://www.fanhow.com/images/thumb/1/1d/Hdtune_1.jpg/540px-Hdtune_1.jpg

Paul

 

[Mike S]

Doesn't this strike you as ominous ?
What does your spider sense tell you ? (Bad hardware)

I thought the most likely explanation was that Ubuntu didn't have the
right graphics driver for her hardware so it used one that was close but
froze up when a problem arose. I've had graphics-related driver issues
with Ubuntu on more than one machine.

Tonight I restored her machine, made a recovery DVD (thanks for advising
me to do that Paul, and Ken Blake), and now she tells me she saw a
Malware warning just before it stopped booting, just like the last time
it stopped booting, when she was playing Fairyland or Farmville or
somesuch.

Note to self - ask more questions before starting!

So instead of Avast I installed MS Security Essentials and AVG, and told
her to call me if she saw any more warnings of any sort before doing
anything. Also if it happens again I'm hoping to repair any boot issues
with the restore DVD, that should be a lot faster than restoring the
whole system each time.

Best Regards,
Mike

 

[Paul]

I thought the most likely explanation was that Ubuntu didn't have the
right graphics driver for her hardware so it used one that was close but
froze up when a problem arose. I've had graphics-related driver issues
with Ubuntu on more than one machine.

Tonight I restored her machine, made a recovery DVD (thanks for advising
me to do that Paul, and Ken Blake), and now she tells me she saw a
Malware warning just before it stopped booting, just like the last time
it stopped booting, when she was playing Fairyland or Farmville or
somesuch.

Note to self - ask more questions before starting!

So instead of Avast I installed MS Security Essentials and AVG, and told
her to call me if she saw any more warnings of any sort before doing
anything. Also if it happens again I'm hoping to repair any boot issues
with the restore DVD, that should be a lot faster than restoring the
whole system each time.

Best Regards,
Mike

Well, malware can be very creative.

The run of the mill malware, is content to mess up the hard drive
and that's about all. Perhaps it'll focus on C:.

But the machine offers a myriad of storage opportunities. I could, say,
infect the recovery partition, so every time you restore, you
restore my malware.

I could try to flash the BIOS chip. I could try to flash the EEPROM
on the video card. Virtually any kind of Flash memory, could be
used as a vehicle for re-infection.

Attacks of those types, are more "focused" attacks, where the attacker
knows the victim, and want to go out of their way to make a nuisance
of themselves. Generic malware has as an objective, profit, either by
botnet rental, mining Bitcoins, click monkey advertising hacks and so on,
or perhaps by stealing gaming passwords or credit card numbers or the like.
But there are other kinds of perps, who take joy from scaring people,
and then there are more potential ways to get the job done.

If you're over there again, do an offline scan (if you can get the
Kaspersky CD to boot), and check *all* the partitions, hidden or not.
Kaspersky is based on Gentoo, and can have a few more problems booting
than Ubuntu might.

With regard to video drivers and Ubuntu, I might expect a problem if
a graphics chip had just come out, and the driver really wasn't ready yet.
But if the hardware is a couple years old, a new Ubuntu CD should just
sail through the boot. They eventually get this stuff right, even
if the path to get there isn't the most efficient (every OS has bugs
that have been outstanding for years and years, so it's human nature
to let some of the bugs slip).

You can remaster the Ubuntu CD if you want. I wouldn't be mentioning
this normally, because the process is usually pretty ugly (involves
chroot and plenty of command line magic). But Ubuntu has "UCK" or
Ubuntu Customization Kit, which allows adding and removing things
from the CD. I don't know if this would help with potential video
issues, but I was able to remove OpenOffice/LibreOffice from
my CD, and load another package I needed. And I actually got a good
CD on the first try. I've not that much of a Linux guy, and this
really surprised me. The Kit does all the hard work, of rebuilding
the image. You just go into Synaptic Package Manager (while UCK is
running) and start deleting stuff. I test the images in VPC2007,
to see if they'll work or not, before wasting a CD. But I got this
one right, on the very first try. I expect fixing a video problem
this way, would be a *lot* tougher than what I was doing.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCDCustomization --->

http://uck.sourceforge.net/ (saves much dog work... allows ignoring
the other page)

You can also load Ubuntu on a USB flash and provide it with persistent
storage (a casper-rw container), and by doing that, you can fix things
then carry the USB stick over to the affected computer. What I don't
like about that, is it's no longer read-only, like a CD would be...

Paul

 

[Rob]

Hi Mike,
Not a common problem with Windows 7 as such, but it is a common problem
to have an intermittent hardware fault which causes issues like this (in
any OS.)

The first thing to check is the RAM. Download memtest86+ and make
a boot CD to test that on another PC:
http://www.memtest.org/

I'm not sure with memtest any more as it did not show any memory faults
in one chip. Not till I removed the chips did I discover the problem
(faulty chip). Used the latest version BTW.

 

[Mike S]

On 2/7/2012 8:04 PM, Paul wrote:

Well, malware can be very creative.

The run of the mill malware, is content to mess up the hard drive
and that's about all. Perhaps it'll focus on C:.
<snip>
If you're over there again, do an offline scan (if you can get the
Kaspersky CD to boot), and check *all* the partitions, hidden or not.
Kaspersky is based on Gentoo, and can have a few more problems booting
than Ubuntu might.

In an effort to see if the machine is clean before making an image of the
restore partition I ran a few scanners, with interesting results:

Trend Micro Housecall free online scan: complete scan
no threats detected

AVG Free Verison: complete scan
no threats detected

MS Security Essentials: scan
quaranteened trojanOS/Alureon.A
delete threat

Malwarebytes Antimalware free version : complete scan
trojan.agent file c:\windows\svchost.exe
trojan.agent memory process c:\windows\svchost.exe
I deleted the threats and rebooted,

MS Security Essentials: scan
found the same: trojanOS/Alureon.A but couldn't delete it!

Google showed that Kaspersky has a tool that works for that trojan:
ran the tool, deleted the trojan, rebooted
while booting MS Security Essentials found more threats but successfully
deleted them

Since Kaspersky trojan tool worked so well I decided to install
Kaspersky Antivirus 2012, a window appeared saying incompatible software
had been detected and had to be uninstalled, but the listbox on the
window was empty. I proceeded with the installation and it uninstalled
the unknown program(s) then rebooted, I looked around and found that MS
Security Essentials was uninstalled.

I rebooted to complete the Kaspersky Antivirus 2012 installation
set all settings to their maximum security possible then did a full
scan, no threats detected.

Do you advise using a hosts file to block some of the threats?

Do you advise Kaspersky Antivirus 2012 over the free/paid AVG, free/paid
Avast, or Microsoft security Essentials?

Thanks,
Mike

 

[Paul]

On 2/7/2012 8:04 PM, Paul wrote:


In an effort to see if the machine is clean before making an image of the
restore partition I ran a few scanners, with interesting results:

Trend Micro Housecall free online scan: complete scan
no threats detected

AVG Free Verison: complete scan
no threats detected

MS Security Essentials: scan
quaranteened trojanOS/Alureon.A
delete threat

Malwarebytes Antimalware free version : complete scan
trojan.agent file c:\windows\svchost.exe
trojan.agent memory process c:\windows\svchost.exe
I deleted the threats and rebooted,

MS Security Essentials: scan
found the same: trojanOS/Alureon.A but couldn't delete it!

Google showed that Kaspersky has a tool that works for that trojan:
ran the tool, deleted the trojan, rebooted
while booting MS Security Essentials found more threats but successfully
deleted them

Since Kaspersky trojan tool worked so well I decided to install
Kaspersky Antivirus 2012, a window appeared saying incompatible software
had been detected and had to be uninstalled, but the listbox on the
window was empty. I proceeded with the installation and it uninstalled
the unknown program(s) then rebooted, I looked around and found that MS
Security Essentials was uninstalled.

I rebooted to complete the Kaspersky Antivirus 2012 installation
set all settings to their maximum security possible then did a full
scan, no threats detected.

Do you advise using a hosts file to block some of the threats?

Do you advise Kaspersky Antivirus 2012 over the free/paid AVG, free/paid
Avast, or Microsoft security Essentials?

Thanks,
Mike

I had KAV for a year, and didn't really appreciate how it worked.
Maybe it's improved. I suppose anything is possible.

I like it for scanning, because occasionally they catch things
some of the others don't. But my problem was, the subscription version
was throwing up "permission" dialogs all the time, to the point of distraction
(eight dialogs per program launch). I contacted support via chat,
and the person on the other end wasn't of any help at all. So when
the subscription ran out, so did I.

A previous version (now ancient history), was adding "alternate streams"
to the NTFS file system, and caused a few people to have problems with C:.
That was a way they were using to keep track of whether files had
changed or not (to reduce the amount of files needing to be scanned
and speeding up things like program launch). So they're innovators
in each release, trying a few new tricks.

*******

Kaspersky offers TDSS_killer, for removing that particular root kit.
There are a number of flavors of TDSS, so the kit presumably removes
the whole family. The idea of the root kit, is it prevents you from
seeing what is really going on, on the machine. Without tools like
that, it would be a lot harder to remove. (I don't know if I could
remove it with a Linux CD, mainly because I'd have trouble finding
all the bits of it.)

*******

The hosts file controls the mapping of IP symbolic addresses to numbers.
By setting suspected web sites to 127.0.0.1, you can prevent the
web browser from connecting to the site. But anyone distributing
malware that way, will be adding sites every day. You need some
software, which offers to update the hosts file on a daily basis.
So I don't know really, how much good that does you. All they
need to do, is get lucky once. If you have some exposure there,
you're eventually going to run into one of those sites.

For me recently, the only activity I've seen, is attempts to
have my browser load PDF files with Javascript malware inside
the PDF. I haven't seen too much other nuisance-ware while
surfing. That PDF trick always brings a smile to my face.
So "high school"... But I bet it still catches victims.
(You can disable Javascript execution, in the Acrobat Reader
preferences.)

Good luck on your TDSS. I hope its gone for good. If it's showing
up and not getting detected, it could be yet another variant.

Paul

 

[z]

On 2/7/2012 8:04 PM, Paul wrote:

Hi Paul,

In my opinion the paid versions of both Kaspersky and AVG are very good.
http://anti-virus-software-review.toptenreviews.com/ is worth looking
at. I wouldn't use the Micro$oft product.

Using a hosts file to block some of the threats is one option. Do you
know if your neighbour downloads torrents? If so, some extra protection
is needed. There are groups out there who attack computers that are
downloading torrents. A good program to protect yourself from this is
PeerBlock. http://www.peerblock.com/

Not only does PeerBlock block these groups, it also blocks Spyware, Ad
Servers, and Educational Institutions. To find out why this is a good
idea, read their website. Do you really want a Computer Science student
hacking in to your computer from his University?

Another good program to install is Secunia PSI
http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/

Hope this helps

Nick.

 

[Mike S]

Hi Paul,
In my opinion the paid versions of both Kaspersky and AVG are very good.
http://anti-virus-software-review.toptenreviews.com/ is worth looking
at. I wouldn't use the Micro$oft product.
Using a hosts file to block some of the threats is one option. Do you
know if your neighbour downloads torrents? If so, some extra protection
is needed. There are groups out there who attack computers that are
downloading torrents. A good program to protect yourself from this is
PeerBlock. http://www.peerblock.com/
Not only does PeerBlock block these groups, it also blocks Spyware, Ad
Servers, and Educational Institutions. To find out why this is a good
idea, read their website. Do you really want a Computer Science student
hacking in to your computer from his University?
Another good program to install is Secunia PSI
http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/
Hope this helps
Nick.

Thanks Nick,
I recommended that my neighbor purchase Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2012
and I will also run Secunia Personal Software Inspector on it. Very
funny comments about the college students.
Thanks Again,
Mike