QOTD: Has a Virus Ever Infected Your PC?

[Guest]

No not really. I have had some viruses in some compressed files but my system always caught it. Never had a virus that took over my system (and I am knocking on the wood).

 

[gm0n3y]

[citation][nom]vagfanboy[/nom]Only when I've let my girlfriends use them unsupervised. Other than that, no, never.Women + Computers = Bad[/citation]

I let my GF use my computer the other day for 15 minutes and I check in on her and she's installed Quicktime, Safari and Itunes. Needless to say I was a little pissed. She doesn't even know how to install a program, but somehow people that don't know what they're doing manage to do some pretty complex things.

 

[cablechewer]

My 386 got infected. It was screwing up my ability to dual boot between DOS and OS/2. Almost cost me a valuable assignment I was working on at the time.

I never let other people connect USB keys to my machine or use their disks. Attachments I delete if they aren't known to be clean (ie: scanned and from a trusted source). People who tend to forward chain mails to me simply go to my deleted items folder. Combine this trust nothing philosophy with a virus scanner and I don't *know* of any infections on any of my PCs in the last 17 years.

 

[danr22]

Never got one from the internet but I did get one from an infected flash drive of a guy I work with just recently.

 

[Guest]

I laughed and laughed as I read the comments. Some good humor. Some intentional, some not. As someone who services home users, small office, home office. I am skeptical about those who say their antivirus has always caught it. Some key points: AVG free does not cut it if the user is involved in risky behavior. As of this last year, many infections are not visible in task manager. Recently, not even in process explorer. Actually, no antivirus cuts it if the user is involved in risky behavior.

 

[icepick314]

i don't think i've ever had any virus attack on my PC...

one time it was close but my anti-virus warned me before i doubleclicked it....

 

[JimmiG]

My Amiga 1200 got infected with some nasty virus once. It was a pain to remove because anti virus software was pretty rare those days, and I didn't have an Internet connection at home so I had to order the definition updates on a floppy disk. It infected a bunch of "save disks" that you typically used without write protection, as well as all my copies of the Workbench floppy disk and the 1.2 GB hard drive. Because you had so many different floppy disks in those days, it was a pain to get rid of the virus - every time I thought all my floppies and the hard drive were clean, I would put in some floppy disk I hadn't used n a while that apparently was already infected, and then the virus would be back into RAM and spread to the hard drive and other floppy disks again...

Can't remember that any of my Windows PC's have had such a severe infection. Once when connecting to the network at the student dormitory where I lived, I got a nasty trojan. It was a clean install of XP and I went online to download the security updates and definition updates. However for some reason the firewall was disabled so my system was infected within seconds. I got banned from the network for several days because my computer had bogged down the entire network. With the firewall enabled I was able to get back online and download all the updates and had no problems after that.

 

[TheFace]

Once a roommate decided to use my computer instead of his tiny laptop. He attempted to use a file from his computer via a thumbdrive, and clicked OFF all the warnings that norton was throwing at him. Just blew right past all of them. Then he comes running to me after my computer freezes and says my computer crashed, like it was either my fault or just the computer randomly did that with no influence by him. I was less than pleased.

 

[wolfseeker2828]

Once upon a time, my family's computer got hit with this really nasty virus that almost killed our hard drive. It spawned like three files and kept duplicating them....over and over and over again....my dad was up all night trying to keep it from overwriting our entire hard drive. Other than that, the only viruses i've gotten have been from being stupid and clicking on stuff that was shady.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

My brother, my wife and my daughter have all gotten various virii on their PCs. My brother because he opened a porn link in an email (Duh!). Actually that one was pretty funny - his kid would turn on the family PC and all these grunting & groaning sex noises would come out of the speakers, so he would run off screaming like the PC was possessed .

My wife clicked on some 'celebrity news' links she shouldn't have. And I dunno what my daughter did since she is off in college - afraid to ask .

Anyway, what saved all their collective bacons was Microsoft's OneCare - it wiped out all the viruses, cleaned the registry and defragged the HDs!

 

[WheelsOfConfusion]

Used to get a virus or a trojan or just some annoying malware all the time, despite running AVG, ZoneAlarm, and regular sweeps with the usual free malware remover programs from a few years ago. It was the family computer, you see. My little brother once got us over 400 viruses, trojans, etc. in just a few hours after installing Kazaa. And of course, since I was the only one remotely familiar with cleaning stuff up, it was always up to me to try and keep things tidy.

That was back when I used Windows XP (and before Vista was released). I moved the family computer over to Ubuntu and have practically forgotten what it's like to run malware scans every other day.

 

[Cuddles]

A couple times sinc3e 1997 and one through an email my friend sent. Endless screens of naked woman flooded till my computer froze and it all happened as my wife walked into the room.

 

[Guest]

Not been infected for years.
No antivirus or any sort are used.

Just some utility from sysinternals which can save my day.

 

[brando56894]

Of course I have and usually I try a scan then a livecd and then a reinstall if that doesnt help, haven't had one in a while though. I dont use a virus scanner any more either, and havent used one for years. I run linux half the time too so that helps.

 

[superhighperf]

i got one years ago. it would not let me access msconfig. i found a work around and eventualy wiped drive and did a fresh install.

 

[Topcover]

It happens to everyone once in a while just scan remove reformat if necessary and move on

 

[Aragorn]

One that a friend accidentally put on my computer trying to share a few programs with me back in '98.

 

[tipoo]

Oh hell yes, i've must have had more than 20 on this machine alone. Thats not to say thats typical, as i download all sorts of crap.

 

[t85us]

backform was my firs virus 15 years ago )

 

[Herbert_HA]

Ah, it's been a while, but I've had my share of small viruses, spyware, etc. After I started using Avast and some others spyware blockers it stopped, around 2003. Changed to mac in 2007 and still no attacks.

 

[blaster00]

i've seen a pc that looks normal without any problems encountered. but when i put my pendrive back to my pc it shows that it has a virus. it seems that sometimes you don't even know that there is a virus in your pc untill you install a antivirus program. sorry for my bad english.

 

[johnnyq1233]

Back 3 years ago I got nailed by that anti-virus malware that looks like windows warning!
Pain in the ass to manually get rid of.....took about 24 hours of safe mode and registry cleaning....
Now I use Avasti! and have not been hit with anything yet! Not that I don't like the challenge, but rather they hit at the most inopertune times!
I think if hackers are targetting the general public then they should be put in jail for 3 times the sentence of corporate attacks!
General people want to use the internet for their personal use..email,banking,sharing photos,etc. Don't mess with these people!

 

[zorro_84]

just use kaspersky it wont let you doing anything without allowing it never had any problems when not use antivirius just dont go to any porn sites or let people with no experience use your computer. a freind got antivirus 2008 that blocks all updates used malwarebytes on a flash drive then firefox next avg got it working in 30 minutes

 

[llemm]

I only got infected when I browse porn sites but a friend advised me to use VMWare. Now I use VMWare if I want to Browse those sites. hahaha! my system is very "Clean" right now.

 

[eaving]

Loadrunner virus on a 2E many many moons ago, but nothing recently