A little computer help?

[morgant]

A little while back i had some virus on my computer that was sending emails from my computer, it messed everything up and i had to reinstall my o/s, XP. I now have more anti-virus software, Norton and can't get it to do live update, and now it is constantly popping up with the message that norton is scanning outgoing emails, bells going off that the same thing is happening again. How do i find this bug and eradicate it, furthermore, how do i prevent the infection in the future? Thanks for any help.
Morg.

[scotnt73]

make sure you are doing all your microsoft xp updates as well. alot of people forget about this very important step. its just as important a virus protection.

[aucu]

Use a spyware program such as Spy Sweeper too. I was amazed at how much junk gets on a computer even with an anti-virus and firewall. Firewalls can be a bit of a joke it's beter to use a router as well.

[John Feeney]

Others have given good advice. I can't answer your specific question, but will mention what I did when my old Norton AV would no longer update. Turned out it was old enough that I was "forced" to upgrade to a newer one. But when I did it kept hanging on download and creating other problems. Uninstalling turned out to be even more of a problem.

To make a long story short, some research revealed that Norton is hated by many, partly because it more or less "infects" your computer with bits and pieces of its AV software, is very difficult to remove, and uses a lot of memory. If you simply use an unistall or "add/remove programs" approach as usual, much will be left behind. I had to DL a registery cleaner (regsupreme) to clean out all the junk Norton had left in my registery, which prevented a proper intallation of the upgrade. I decided I'd had enough of Norton, got my money back, and on further research, chose another AV program which I think is better designed. Check out some of the lesser known, but very good AV software out there. PM me for specifics if you like. FWIW...

[Gahnia radula]

[ QUOTE ]
Use a spyware program such as Spy Sweeper

[/ QUOTE ]

Spy bot and ad aware are also realy good

[DrPhysic]

Some excellent advice in the other answers: My answer as follows:

Norton System Works 2004. Peter Norton and Bill Gates agree on nothing about how to run a pc. I use norton to fix gates' problems. Starting with NSW2003, AV has worm protection IF YOU HAVE E-MAIL CHECKING TURNED ON. I use one button checkup, Disk doctor, Win Doctor, ghost, AV... regularly.

Also: Spybot, Spyware Blaster, Spyware Guard. Spybot and Spyware blaster are functionally the same, but catch each other's misses.(AdAware also good, I prefer Spybot) Spyware Guard is a spyware blaster symbiot that is memory resident just like your av auto-protect. Both should ALWAYS be on.

Also: If you have no other firewall (and i think there is one in XP how good i don't know, i am a w2k user) get ZoneAlarm. DO NOT operate a computer online today without a firewall.

Update all including windows on a weekly basis. The new virus's and worms come out too fast now for a once a month update.

It sounds like your norton is out of date, need to upgrade. You can buy Norton System Works 2004 on e-bay for about $45 last i saw, $125 price in the stores with ghost.

Doc

[DrPhysic]

One further thought:
Your computer CAN survive today without:
A firewall,
A virus checker,
A resident virus program
A spyware checker
A resident spyware program and
A worm checker...

It's easy...

Just unplug the phone line.

Doc