Program suggestions for removal

[spkenny]

As a computer tech, I do mostly onsite jobs with customers. In my arsenal are avast antivirus, mbam, hijackthis, and spyware doctor. These 4 seem to take care of at least 90 to 95% of problems, but I obviously dont know everything. What programs are there availiable that would further help me weed out the culprits? An example is winpatrol, which I hadnt heard of until today. So suggest away, and thank you techspot for the help thus far

 

[rev_olie]

Hi,

The tools you have posted will do like you say some jobs.

However I must point out that you need to check the licensing rules for each piece of software to make sure you can run them on multiple machines.

Now to look over them:
avast antivirus

This is in my opinion a very good anti virus product and gives you good protection overall which i why i use it :stickout:

mbam

Another good piece of software. Good for removing numerous tools on the rouge front andwas one of the first to remove WinXP Antivirus etc

hijackthis

Now these bottom 2 im not so sure about. HijackThis WAS a good tool. However it has since been acquired by trend micro, the Norton people. They have really left the tool to rot and have not updated it for some time. A newer version is in the works but most new infections are actually able to completely hide from HJT in itself.
Due to this as a log analyser I would advise you switch to OTL. It gives a much longer and comprehensive log for you to analyse like you do with Hijackthis and gives you a wider scope to which to act on.

Spyware doctor

I would definitely say get rid of this. It is one of those tools that has been open to debate for quite some time now and has been reported to throw in things that don't actually exist to make you feel better in the program and basically buy it. From then on it will usually come up with mostly false positives and wont really give you any protection.
What this removes MBAM will probably also remove. However if you feel you need something else then I would include SuperAntiSpyware. That to me gives you good protection and removal rates for most infections and the program itself is regularly updated..
However I would say don't turn on TeaTimer as it can eat your resources on your PC.

Now the only other thing I can think of that you have missed is RootKit detection. This type of infection is becoming increasingly more popular and many types of software are still not picking them up.
Currently I use RootRepeal to search for rootkit infections and produces a log again for you to analyse and check.

After that its just down to research into what the logs bring up and then making sure the PC is locked down eg Firewall, updated services packs, Java etc.