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Listed below are some examples of free
anti-virus software, firewalls, email protection
software, virus prevention software, anti-virus trials,
links to specialized anti-virus sites, information about
virus prevention, useful evaluation versions of
anti-virus software, etc.
Virus scanners operate
by searching your hard disk(s) for files which might be
infected by a virus. This method is never 100% secure,
since only known virus patterns are detected. If an
infection has been detected in a certain file, the virus
scanner might be able to clean the file, but often you
will need to try another scanner to clean the file, you
can try to replace the file or - as a last resort -
delete it.
However, if many important operating
system files are affected, it might be the best solution
to reformat the hard disk and install the operating
system from scratch.
There are even viruses can
not be cleaned by hard-disk reformatting. These
so-called boot-viruses infect the boot-sector of disks,
and will not be removed by simply reformatting the hard
disk. In this case you will need to repair the
boot-sector, a good utility for this can be found in
Norton
Utilities (not
free).
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Free Online Virus
Scanners |
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Housecall |
Trend Micro- Free |
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Symantec |
Symantec- Free |
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Panda |
PandaSoft- Free. |
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McAfee FreeScan |
McAfee- You'll need to create a free
account the first time. Checks C: drive
only.
Each of the free external scans above
require small, temporary downloads. Be sure to
turn off any onboard scanners before visiting the
above two links, to avoid
conflicts. |
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Free Online Parasite
Scanners |
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Dox Desk |
Dox Desk's free external scan. Will help
identify and remove the annoying
Gator/Xupiter/IEPlugin.exe
toolbars. |
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Free Online Security
Testers |
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Shields
Up! | |
