[Marylander]

A while ago I installed the free Norton antivirus from Comcast. Last week I somehow got a virus communicated in a PDF file. Over the next few days my computer slowed down to barely a crawl, 20 minutes to start up, for example. Assuming the hard drive was damaged, I tried a time-consuming variety of safe starts and chkdsks. After while it refused to start safe any more.

The virus had erased the anti-virus information files, so my Norton was helpless. I cured it all by downloading updated info files (also free)and running a full scan. Way at the end of the hours-long scan, it identified and destroyed the PDF file with the Trojan.

The report said the Trojan was a high risk one that read keystrokes and at least tried to connect with some outside source. Fortunately I did not have to worry about keystrokes because Norton has encrypted all my account signons and signs me in without keystrokes. All is back to normal now.

The lesson for me is to run full scans every once in a while because the limited background scan did not pick up on the Trojan.

I know this sounds like a commercial for Norton, but it sure felt good to get my old computer back.

[savagesusie]

I have an IMAC now, but when i had my HP for several years, I used Norton and had no problems and I go to many suspect sites. Speed was no problem.