[softwarelist] Another Windows horror story

Hi,
Last week it became obvious my PC had a virus. I was lucky that it caught something designed to be irritating and promote virus detecting software.
I watched what happened and I could find where the rogue code was in Windows. However I could not unhook it from the insides of Windows and neither could the anti virus software I tried.
How did this happen? - I'd turned off Windows automatic updates, because I didn't want my computer changing configuration without me knowing about it. I'd also not done many manual updates.
I watched Windows explorer crash and shortly thereafter, the virus appear. I presume it activated itself via some shortcoming in IE. 

I wiped the hard disc and I reinstalled everything.
I've now got Windows updates turned on, and a virus scanner installed, and I have a computer that spends most of its time scanning for virus's and doing updates.
It is amazing how many automatic updates for Windows there are. No one would sensibly keep up with them manually. I've seen Windows do an update and demand a machine restart twice in five days as soon as I turn the computer on.
In my career this is the first virus I've had on a Windows computer, the other few incidents were on RISC OS.
The moral is, you can't get away without Windows updates, however careful you are. 


--
David Pilling
email: david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  web: http://www.davidpilling.net
 post: David Pilling P.O. Box 22 Thornton Cleveleys Blackpool. FY5 1LR UK
  fax: +44(0)870-0520-941

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