Ricky Says

Last year I trashed on Norton because it failed to protect my home computers from Malware Alarm, and instead gave props to Panda Antivirus.

A rep from Norton reached out to me a couple weeks ago, and asked if I'd give them a second chance with their new flagship program Norton 360. He said they'd greatly improved their focus on virus protection, and was confident that they'd addressed the issues I raised in my earlier review.

I'm all about second chances, so I downloaded and installed Norton 360 on both of my home computers - one that's used primarily by my kids upstairs for games, and my wife's laptop that she uses for email, shopping online, and of course Facebook. My Panda subscription had expired, so these machines had been running unprotected for a while. I was getting some windows error popups every time I started the kids computers - indicating that a file or memory address could not be accessed, and who knows what else had snuck onto those machines while browsing the web and playing online games (my kids tend to just click "Ok" whenever they see popups, a habit I'm trying to get them to stop).

After installing Norton, which includes a license for up to 3 computers, I ran a full scan to check for viruses, spyware, tracking cookies, malware - the works.

It turned out I had 4 trojan horse viruses lurking on my system, which Norton was able to detect and delete. Trojans are dangerous viruses that work secretly in the background to download and run fraudulent security tools, keyloggers, adware, web browser toolbars and other malicious applications.

Question: My computer is taking a really long time to shut down or restart - like a few minutes. Drives me nuts. Any solutions?

Answer: I had the exact same thing happen on my kid's PC that's running Windows XP. I tried all kinds of things, like registry cleaner programs, disk optimizers, windows update, and applying service packs. Nothing worked, and for a long time I had to just endure the problem.

I recently installed Panda Internet Security on that machine, and it found a slew of viruses and malware programs that were installed (probably from one of the kid's games websites they visited).

It was able to remove them all from my system and the slow shutdown problem went away immediately.

I'm not sure which virus caused the problem, but it hasn't returned since I installed Panda, so I'd recommend giving it a try.

Here's a link to the Panda download page where you can try it for free.

Question: My computer keeps locking up and runs quite a bit slower than it used to. Programs like Internet Explorer and MS Office freeze when I try to open them. Is it time to buy a new computer?

Answer: Before you go out and buy a new system, consider this: your computer's hardware hasn't changed (the processor, the memory, the hard drive, etc), so it's not likely the cause of the performance problems you're experiencing - which is good news because I'm sure you'd rather not shell out several hundred dollars for a new computer.

Chances are good that you have a virus that has infected your system and is slowing down performance.

How to find out if your system has been infected with a virus:

If you're experiencing performance problems and in particular are seeing weird behavior such as programs freezing or the system locking up, then it's time to scan your system for viruses (even if you have Norton or McAfee already installed - those programs are notorious for not knowing about the latest viruses).

I recently found a program that will scan your system and remove viruses for free. It's called AVG Free, and here's the download link: http://free.avg.com/

Here's what it found when it scanned my system:

Question: Can malware or spyware do any real harm to my computer, or is it all just a bunch of hype?

Answer: Yes, malware, spyware, and adware can wreak havoc on your computer - from capturing financial account information, using your computer to make expensive phone calls or send spam emails, keeping you from using your web browser due to obnoxious (and fake) security warning popups, and even placing hard core porn links on your desktop.

I used to naively think that malware was just a minor but harmless annoyance, or that spyware was limited to just reporting my online preferences much like a grocery card at Safeway. That was until my home computers became infected with MalwareAlarm and I was unable to use my web browsers altogether, due to the constant popups claiming I needed to send this company money to get rid of the security popups.

More recently I turned off my anti-spyware software for a couple of days to troubleshoot some performance issues, and my system was almost immediately infected with IEMonster and another nasty adware infection called zlob.PornAdvertiser (and not from visiting any questionable or adult-related websites either).

Question: I have paid for the full version of Malware Alarm, but now I can't find the software on my PC. I paid $40 for it - can I use it or get my money back?

Answer: I'm sorry to be the one to break the bad news to you, but you've actually sent your money to the very malware program that you were trying to remove from your system. You're not alone either - this is an extremely manipulative and invasive infection that convinces a lot of people to send in their money in hopes of getting rid of MalwareAlarm, only to find that they've been swindled.

The good news is that you can effectively get rid of MalwareAlarm from your system using a couple programs that have proven to completely remove Malware Alarm. Read on to learn more about MalwareAlarm and the programs that will remove malware from your computer, and that will also prevent malware from infecting your system in the future.

MalwareAlarm is a program that falsely claims to be an anti-spyware application that will scan for and remove spyware from users' computers. It attempts to trick or pressure users into purchasing the program by presenting the user with intrusive, deceptive warnings and/or false, misleading scan results.