Congratulations! You just won!

Install Microsoft Security Essentials on your dad's computer so he won't get any new viruses...
http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

You might consider it for yourself

Its free, lightweight and effective

freaky88 said:

why does everyone use mse? theres alot of antiviruses with better detection, also use malwarebytes

Because it is free (and in my case, only because its free). I personally dont use MSE...

freaky88 said:

avira is free, malwarebytes, and if you want the best protection evar

use this setup:

avira
peerblock (not just for p2p, you can use as a firewall)
malwarebytes
windows firewall
emsisoft anti-malware

Or mine: What security setup do you have?

IWillWin said:

I keep getting these "You just won" audio messages at random, every few minute or so. It's only started today. What can I do to make them stop?

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This answer is sort of long... It may be very well worth reading, and may be of help here.

I had this very annoying "Whatever it is" happening on three computers. I believe it came in with one of the optional Chrome extensions. I strongly suspect it came in with the Youtube Down-loader extension. Before I installed this extension in these computers, I did not have this problem.

After spending some time reading various groups, it seems that there are a fair number of Trojans that produce this sound. Some are doing it with banners, and others are the sound itself. Some reports are saying that it is a Spyware, and others are saying it is simply an annoying type of Trojan written as a joke that does not do anything.

Whatever it is, I found it to be very annoying and I wanted it out ASAP.

I ran Spybot, and it did not fix the problem. Spybot however, did its normal job, and got rid of a few dozen undesirable cookies and registry entries for marketing tracking. These are harmless anyways, but undesirable to have in one's system.

How I got rid of it, or I think I got rid of it, was to clean out all the Internet Cache for each browser in the system, system cache, and forced the computer to rebuild the swap file. A quick way to do the cleanup for the main cache files is to go through the drive properties, and do a disk cleanup. Take care where you put the check-marks for what you intend to clean up.

To clean the swapfile in Windows 7, I went in to Advanced Tools, Performance Options, and then Advanced. Then I went to virtual memory. I removed the check mark on Automatically manage paging file. I then made the paging file at the minimum it can accept. I clicked my out despite of all the warnings. Then I re-started the computer. I made an image backup before doing anything, so I can restore the system back if I have a big problem.

After the re-start, I set the paging file back to its normal size and re-started again. I had to re-start a second time, because on the first re-start I got a blue screen. The error codes translated to a serious swap-file problem.

After the second re-start I ran CHKDSK /F from the system prompt. I went to Start, then Run, and typed CMD in the command prompt, and clicked OK. On the next re-start CHKDSK did its thing and found about 20 file fixes to correct. I expected this because of the severe downsizing of a proper swap-file.

I then went back to the CMD prompt and ran SFC /SCANNOW. If you do not have an installation copy of the OS on your hard disk, you will need to use the original Windows installation disk in your CD or DVD drive to run this utility.

SFC is System File Compare. It will check all the critical OS files to see that they conform to the original installation. Normally, it should not be destructive to any installed software, unless there were some changes to the OS that should never have been done.

To use SFC, or CHKDSK you have to have full administrator access. For Windows 7, you can do a Google search to find out about how to create a full Administrator account. With Win 7 it's different than with XP or Win 2000.

I then ran the Microsoft Windows Defender. After this, I did a full scan using McAfee Virus scanner with the optional spyware and malware protection options installed.

Since I did all of this exact same process on three computers, I did not get the problem back on any of them.

By-the-way, I disabled that Youtube down-loader extension that I installed. If I find out this was the culprit that caused my grief I will uninstall it.

This is the link to the Chrome software extension I suspect that caused my problem:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/d...pfdgffjopphmoa For those who are adventurous it's free to try. Make an image backup of your drive before using it.

I am not sure if this is actual fact the above extension is the fault. I am speculating at this point, because it was right after using it I started to have that annoying problem.

Also, it may not be fact that every version of this annoying Trojan can be rid of in the same manner that worked for the one that I had. From what I read there are many versions of this culprit.

If I have the time, I will do a full system image backup, and then re-install the suspect Chrome extension. If the culprit returns, I will know for sure. Then I can restore the system image to get rid of it again.

Previous to wiping out all the system caches and system swapfile, this Trojan would keep coming back after running the McAfee virus scanner. I strongly suspect this is because it was re-loading itself from either the swapfile, or from one of the cache folders using that Chrome extension as the driver for it.

It's about two weeks since I did all of this to remove that Trojan, and it has not returned so-far.

One annoying thing I have with the McAfee scanner, is it will not let me see the quarantined files. I went in to the General Settings and Alerts. I removed the check-mark at Use Access Protection. This added requirement came in a few versions ago. The reason was because some users who were checking their quarantined files were accidentally re-installing the malicious files that were removed instead of deleting them!

I would really like to know the name of this annoying problem that I had, that killed a fair number of hours with grief for me. I would also like to know where and how I got it in to my computer. I am very careful with what I do and where I download files.

At my two locations I am running a hardware firewall, along with system traffic monitoring. I am also running very strongly managed malicious site blocking based on McAfee Site Adviser and some other services which is kept up to date. I use very high security restrictions for the allowable levels of Java and Flash. Programs cannot be installed unless the request prompts are approved.

As for virus scanners, all the big name scanner programs should be about equal. Some may be ahead or behind each other for a short time in their database updates, but they go neck-in-neck with each other. They work based on common research standards.

The international research standard corporation is called EICAR. Home ° EICAR - European Expert Group for IT-Security This site is an interesting visit. They also give information and a standard test string with instructions about how to set it up; that can be used to check if your system virus scanner is working.

I don't use MSE because it's free but because it works for me. It's light on the system and in most cases hassle free. It allows other programs run with it (active) such as MBAM Pro. My thoughts are that Microsoft want to keep their operating system working properly and free of bad things. Microsoft knows their system better than anybody. Through the years I have used several store bought internet security systems and I only started use MSE because of the problems I had with the last two store bought ones. To the best of my memory MSE doesn't cause BSOD like many others do at times. No program is a 100% all the time. As we all do, we pick what we think will work and if it does we keep it until we are not satisfied. When Jacee recommends running a program to get rid of bad things, I just do it. I have to trust someone in the field.

Layback Bear said:

I don't use MSE because it's free but because it works for me. It's light on the system and in most cases hassle free. It allows other programs run with it (active) such as MBAM Pro. My thoughts are that Microsoft want to keep their operating system working properly and free of bad things. Microsoft knows their system better than anybody. Through the years I have used several store bought internet security systems and I only started use MSE because of the problems I had with the last two store bought ones. To the best of my memory MSE doesn't cause BSOD like many others do at times. No program is a 100% all the time. As we all do, we pick what we think will work and if it does we keep it until we are not satisfied. When Jacee recommends running a program to get rid of bad things, I just do it. I have to trust someone in the field.

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I must fully agree with you. The MS products work very well, despite of comments that I have heard. The use of the MS virus scanner with their malware protection software is a good combination.

As for myself, I have been using McAfee virus scanner since it came out in the DOS days. I must be going back to about 1985 or so. I have many licenses for it, because I am using it on some business networks.

The full commercial versions of McAfee and Norton virus scanners have a lot of extra options and offer a lot of different setups. They have commercial type versions that can work across networks, and operate in many complicated setups. These can do remote system scans and fixes. They can also monitor network activity, and keep logs of traffic, keep logs of data transfer size, and of the computer IP numbers that are logged on.

For home or small business use the MS protection programs are excellent. I am using them in my own personal XP type laptop and an XP desktop. They work very well.

I know there are some people who speak against the MS products and Windows. I have no idea about why. I have been doing Windows IT support since NT3. Windows is a huge OS and is very complicated. The full professional and server versions have very high levels of security with the capability of setting different types of policies in groups or for individual users. MS has terrific technical support for their products.