Is it necessary to pay £40 p.a. for anti-virus ?

[bolt pp]

Why is my google fu***D please?

[Karabiner]

Thanks a lot for all the help guys.

[Ironside]

good chance you have spyware bolt you need to do a spyware scan on your pc i prefer spyware doctor others have there only prefrences

[RichEO]

Why is my google fu***D please?

Your browser is probably hijacked. Try running hosuecall tonight when you go off to bed, it will take several hourse to complete. It may sort it out completely.

Are you using internet explorer, do you get the same happening with firefox?

[Bongo]

has no impact on your systems performance, unlike Norton.

I cut about a minute off the bootup time of a mate's PC by switching Norton to NOD32.

[TightPaulFolds]

I use AVG, but may change having read this thread. Keep your windows and Internet Explorer up to date. Do not run unlicensed software especially Operating Systems. Be careful with Peer to Peer. Be careful of lyrics sites. Do not open unsolicited emails.
Yahoo toolbar antispy is ok as well.
With the amount of free stuff about, i'd be hard pushed to fork out 40 quid for antivirus, especially if it messes with my system and connection like Norton did.

[KeithyB]

Used to run Norton on two computers and initially thought it excellent but ultimately it seemed to screw both of them.

Seems fine when running well but is a nightmare when it goes wrong and twice I've had to totally reload everything from scratch to resolve issues.

Now run AVG antivirus (free) and AVG antispyware ( not free but worth it ) with assistance from Spysweeper, Spyware blaster, Adaware and Spybot and, touch wood, no problems since.

[KeithyB]

Why is my google fu***D please?

Sounds like the infection I had a few months back where the first few Google searches would also redirect to a site other than that indicated by the search.  Most of the time seemed to redirct to other search engine type sites.

Anyway was a real pain to get rid of.  AVG antispyware picked it up and partially removed it but I remember having to download something called Killbox which zaps individual files.  May also be worth downloading Hijackthis, which takes a snapshot of processes on your system, and then posting a log from that on a PC forum.

Just checked my quarantine logs and the offending spyware that caused it for me was trojan.small.fb and downloader.agent.uj if that helps.

One tip is that when you run your anti spyware to do it after booting in safe mode because these ones were also hiding in system restore files and will just come back if you scan in normal mode.

[KingPoker]

Why is my google fu***D please?

yeh as keithy said go to hijackthis and do a full scan, it involves a lot of stuff but is designed to detect malware so do the preparation, do the scan then post your log file on the forum and someone should help. not a guaranteed success but im sure you will get to the root of the problem by doing this.

[Bongo]

Keep your windows and Internet Explorer up to date. Do not run unlicensed software especially Operating Systems.

I'd said better advice would be not to use IE in the first place!

[RichEO]

Do not run unlicensed software especially Operating Systems.

Yes, of course,

[TightPaulFolds]

Do not run unlicensed software especially Operating Systems.

Yes, of course,

I love the way the illegal copies try to faithfully replicate everything on the original, including 'Do not make illegal copies of this disk'.

A mate installed a erm copy of Win XP only to find it kinda was WinXP but with an entirely new bit of code 'silkroped' into it. Kept reformatting hard drive and reinstalling windows, durr...

Overall, a great idea to
1. Partition your hard drive
2. Put windows only in one bit, all your other stuff in another
3. Use a CD/DVD writer to backup the documents you really need on a monthlyish basis.
If it all goes tits up you can always just reformat one partition and pull what you need from CD DVD and save a million hours trying to 'weed the garden' so to speak.

Oh yeah, and if my antivir results come back positive, especially for trojans, after the cleanup I change all my critical passwords, especially my poker ones. Also I dye my hair and grow a beard in case they have stolen my identity. 

[M3boy]

I use Kaspersky, and have done so for a few years.