 | Question... My next laptop may be a Samsung Chromebook (basically a glorified browser, right?) cuz my Windoze netbook is so hosed with infection. (It works fine offline, but will only run for maybe 15 minutes online before having to be re-started... Ive tried avg free, malwarebytes, panda, and now ad-aware, and they always find hijacks & Trojans & stuff, but they always come back immediately when I get online.) what do you think if the Chromebook? I would just use it to upload my photos etc. anyway... |
I dunno about the Chromebook, I really need a real Windoze computer for what I do. You just be clicking the wrong stuff I guess. I think probably the Android tablets are relatively infection/malware free, but my windows subnotebooks are much more useful than my android tablet.
After you get the infection, all bets are off, AV software installed later after virus infection is vulnerable to being interfered with so that it doesnt recognize the infections. And its probably not an exact science of how to remove viruses. The only way to successfully check your current compromised netbook is via an antivirus solution that functions from a booted CDROM. It will be able to effectively find any virus it was designed to find, but like I said, it may or may not be able to remove all of them.
I think restoring your current netbook might be a better option.
Here's the prescription:
- 0. Backup all your existing datafiles to an external drive. .JPG .GIF .PNG photos should be safe. A lot of other stuff is questionable, for example .PDF and word .DOC files can carry various kinds of viruses. .ZIP files containing only safe files should be safe. Note that any .EXE file that has been accessed by your current netbook is suspect.
- 1. Restore your existing netbook with fresh install of Windows.
- 2. Get online and get the right drivers. (Dont get the drivers with your computer, they might get infected. Hopefully fresh install of windows will see enough of your computer to get things working enough to get online to get all the drivers.)
- 2.5. Run all the windows updates too.
- 3. Install AVG, and run all its updates.
- 4. Install any other software you have that comes from CDROM from the manufacturer (because every executable you currently have is at risk of being infected.)
- 5. You could also trust freshly downloaded stuff from reputable projects, for example maybe you want to install openoffice.org for an ms office clone.
- 5.5 Run updates for any stuff like Adobe software, etc. Latest software protects from a lot of problems. 6. I usually expect it will take me 4-8 hours sometimes even more to install all the stuff I install....
- 6. After you have all the stuff you want installed, get a copy of Acronis Image or Acronis backup, and a cheap new USB hard drive, and make yourself a complete bootable backup of your machine. Then dont use that drive again unless you need to do a restore, that drive is just insurance you dont want to ever use.... Maybe once every month, if your laptop still working ok, you can make a new backup to that drive.
I have some laptops I've been using for years that, as far as I know, aren't infected. You just gotta be more careful about where you go, what software you use, and keeping things up to date.