Virus/Trojan Horse Protection?

[lpc300]

Hi all,

Let's say I have two partitions, both with identical instalations of Win2K, applications, and files. Let's then say that I get a virus or trojan horse attack on one of those partitions. Will the other be safe from problems or will it be damaged also?

I have a lot of security software running (anti-virus, firewall) and I have security settings pretty high. I back up, regularly, anyway. Just wondering if it is also a good stop-gap for security problems.

[morriswindgate]

Avirus not only can attack other partitions, but also other drives. And a Trojan will give access to all drives. A good upto date AV program and a Firewall will stop most of these before they get a chance to do anything.
Additionial protection can come from using an image program like Drive Image or Ghost, since the majority of the virus payloads are looking for files with System extensions or Media Extensions (MP3, jpg,jpeg,wav,ect) and will leave a file with a .pqi extension (Drive Image) alone.

[lpc300]

Thanks for the reply, morris. What you said is what I thought. Just Ghosted my HDD (to another HDD). I did it drive to drive, not drive to image. Based on what you said, this seems incorrect for protection. Am I correct?

[morriswindgate]

The file needs to be in the compressed format so that it is written with a .gho extension. Also remember if the virus payload has .gho in it, then it will destroy that file also.
A couple of freeware proggies that areworth having are Swatit which looks for Trojans and if found cleans them and Spybot - Search and Destory which will clean all sorts of Spyware and Internet tracks. Just type the names in on Google.
Just remeber the first line of protection is using your brain! It is almost impossible to get a virus or trojan unless you do something to let it in, such as opening attachments from unknown persons or downloading files without having you AV program set to scan them.

[lpc300]

Thanks morris. I'm always careful about opening attatchments...if I don't know the person, it gets deleted. BTW, I've been using Spybot for about a month, based on your recomendation in a previous thread. Found stuff AdAware didn't. Thanks again.

[Blankman]

Case in point, my former boss fires me, gets a virus one week later. Doesn't know what happened to his drive. Calls Dell who tells him to put his drive in another machine. He puts it into the server which then allows the virus to propagate across the entire LAN, losing vital and important data, now his business is going bankrupt.