Virus/ Trojan detection

[Expiry]

Following on from my question about MSE. How do you know when you have a virus or trojan problem and your AV software has missed it?

I ask because my laptop is only a year old - a Sony VIAO - I paid about £750 for it, purposely not going for a cheapy and yet it goes incredibly slowly at times. My broadband speed is reasonable in most tests I do, so I don't think that's the issue.

 

[Domski]

I use SuperAntiSpyware and SpybotS&D:

http://www.superantispyware.com/
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/home/index.html

Both seem pretty good at finding nasties that may have been missed.

Dom

 

[Norie]

Are you sure it's a virus that's slowing things down?

There are plenty of other things that could be the culprit.

 

[Expiry]

Are you sure it's a virus that's slowing things down?

There are plenty of other things that could be the culprit.

Hi, Norie. No, I'm not sure at all and I'm hoping it's not. I don't have a massive amount of photos saved on my machine - a couple of thousand, probably. That's it from a file storage perspective.

There's a lot of Sony software that was pre-installed on the machine and I've been slowly weeding out what I think I don't need.

Other than that, I really don't know what to do to improve performance. I'm sure it's not right, though.

 

[Norie]

Where/when is it being slow?

eg startup, using specific applications etc

 

[RoryA]

The Sony preinstalled software is legendary for slowing their computers down.

To check for nasties, you can also try Malwarebytes.

 

[Expiry]

Where/when is it being slow?

eg startup, using specific applications etc

Timewise, it's mainly used for web browsing (for some reason, since I bought this laptop for myself, the wife has decided that her old one that was perfectly good for what she wanted, previously, is now not even worth looking at) and photo editing, along with a bit of Excel stuff.

It's mainly the web browsing that I notice it. Very slow moving from page to page at times. As I said, I've checked the up/ download speed and that seems to be ok.

 

[mortgageman]

The Sony preinstalled software is legendary for slowing their computers down.

To check for nasties, you can also try Malwarebytes.

I had a virus problem until my local guy put Malwarebytes on my computer.
Knock wood - so far so good.

Gene Klein

 

[Norie]

Expiry

Have you checked out your DNS settings?

I remember I was having problems with slow browsing and I fixed it by changing them from their original 'default' settings.

 

[SydneyGeek]

VIPRE. The best anti-spyware / malware that I have come across. Deals with rootkits as well.
Something to think about; I have a desktop that was being ridiculously slow, especially when I browsed the web. I was using Firefox as my default browser, and Task Manager showed that it grabbed almost 100% of CPU upon launch. Maybe an incompatible add-in, with the anti-crash component running overtime just to keep the browser running? Anyway, switched to a different default browser (Chrome) and the problem went away.

Denis