i recomended to a friend to scan his computer with the Panda virus scan which he did. my friend told me his computer completly froze 5 minutes into the scan. he did a hard boot and is complaning that his computer is running extremly slow now. apparently it takes the start menue a few minutes to appear on the screen. my friend also said 54 items were found by the scan before the computer froze

Refer him to the PC Maintenance guide.

Has links to Trend Micro online AV scan which works better than Panda.

he tried to download the Trendmicro scan but was unable to do so. he had the same problem i had with the download with the page getting hung up while linking to the European site. getting him to follow the right steps to cleaning out his computer is hard, he wants to take the easy route and going straight to the Panda scan.

Try getting Etrust, that helps, maybe its something to do with the ActiveX controls (the virus(s) might be screwing around with it), see if he can use the link below:

http://www.my-etrust.com/SubscriptCenter/M...gistration.aspx

Its a 1 year trial, and its what everyone around here recommends.

If he installs it fine, get him to update it, then ask him to re-boot into safe mode (for XP users; Start - Run - type msconfig - BOOT.INI - tick /SAFEBOOT - Apply and O.K it, hit restart - repeat process but untick box to get out of safe mode after finishing the scan).

Use a good anti-virus with a very high detection rate and low memory usage like Kaspersky or NOD32, or freeware go with AntiVir or Avast.

Use a good anti-virus with a very high detection rate and low memory usage like Kaspersky or NOD32, or freeware go with AntiVir or Avast.

I agree with the NOD32....It is very light on resources and is an excellent scanner. Picks up viruses, Adware, some Trojans and it now just came out with Rootkit detection and removal!

You pay a moderate amount for it (I think it's $39), but it's well worth it...I haven't had any problems with malware since I started using it two years ago. It has caught a few drive by downloads and quarantined them before they executed. I've tried many scanners and this has been the best so far. They also have a 30 day free trail!

NOD32 30 day trial

Tony

Try Panda's NANOSCAN which will scan your computer faster then any online scanner out there with over 1,000,000 threats that it could detect Nanoscan

Its Panda's newer version of the FREE Active Scan that they have on their website and it works great

That NanoScan is a pretty cool thing - and it works with Firefox as well as IE. Not a complete scan, basically just looks at active processes; and doesn't remove anything, just tells you about what it finds - but you could run it real often, since it's so fast.

I'd like to see somebody test it with a deliberately infected computer, see how effective it is.