I have 3 PC's in a little home-based office in Central Mexico (that
should not make any difference. We have been plagued, plagued, plagued
with viruses.

Our technician is weary of reformatting the hard drives. We were using
McAfee but we could have been using nothing and gotten the same
infections.

Now our tech is testing Norton 2002 and we have viruses popping up all
over.

There has got to be a better anti-virus program that keeps on top of
the new viruses and all the tricky ones that we could live, and work
and be on line in peace. We are logged on to the Internet 16 hours
each day.

Which sharp Answers researcher has an answer for me? 
Maybe we need to learn something else to protect ourselves. We just
delete emails with attachments from people or messages that we know
are not for us.

Thanks.
John P.

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Request for Question Clarification by tisme-ga on 05 Feb 2003 08:39 PST

Are you using the autoupdate features with these two software titles?
In my opinion the two best antivirus software programs are Norton and
McAffee. Perhaps you should look into also getting McAffee internet
security which will prevent certain emails from opening and certain
programs from connecting to the internet.

tisme-ga

From personal experience I recommend the following software
www.pandasoftware.com, which in fact has prevented us from any virus
up to date. ( we are connected to the internete 24/7)  You must of
course keep up with daily updates, (and they do in fact keep in track 
with the last virus development) it is a pretty easy process.

They are not as popular as Mcfee but the do sure do work well.  You
can also try their pandaactivescan, (that would be located on the
lower left side) it runs easy and could let you know if there are any
virus on your pc.

By the way we downloaded the software right from the site (paid with
credit card) no problem up to this date.

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Clarification of Answer by cerebro-ga on 17 Feb 2003 14:27 PST

been trying this for the last couple of months, www.bullguard.com

Dear Cerebro-ga. Thank you for your sincere effort to give an answer.
I have given you a 1-star rating, which is the first I have ever
given.

If you reread this whole section, you will see that before you
answered, there had been a whole host of comments. Actually in my
opinion acorn-ga gave an excellent and helpful comment (worth a 5star
answer in my book) before you answered.

I don't think that your recommendation is really the best software as
per my question.

I trust I do not discourage you from being an Answers researcher and
you will be a better one as you pay attention to my above comments.

God bless you to know and do His will!
John P.

For a start, watch out for e-mail attachments from unknown senders.

Not 100% safe but could prevent some of 'em.

I haven't had a virus in 2 years. I simply use Zone Alarm (free
firewall), Norton Anti-Virus (I update the data each week) and,
probably most importantly, I don't use Outlook. In fact, I only use
web-based email.

I doubt that your problem is Norton. Systemworks as a whole can be a
system drain, but the anti-virus is excellent.

I, also, am wondering about whether or not you/your tech have been
updating your virus signatures regularly and strongly suspect not.  My
daughter had Norton on her system, sent me an email virus (which was
caught), and when I went over to clean her computer, found that she
had never done anything to update the virus signatures in the 16
months she had the program...she didn't realize she had to.  Her
computer had over a dozen viruses and she'd been infecting all sorts
of other folks' computers!

And that, in my opinion, a is pretty standard situation - people don't
realize they have to *do* something once they install anti-virus
software.  Often it comes with their computer and they don't realize
that it's not a buy-it-once and be-protected-forever product.  I find
that a major failing on the part of virus protection software
manufacturers.  They are not getting their message across clearly.

I have been using McAfee Viruscan Online for 2 years (and Norton
before that).  My updates are done automatically and average about
once every 3 days.  Haven't had a virus in years.  My daughter also
uses it now and no longer has any virus problems.  (Like
robertskelton-ga, I also use ZoneAlarm as my firewall and don't use
Outlook at home.)

At work we use Outlook and AVG antivirus, which updates all the time
as well, and it catches Outlook viruses all the time.  The common key
for these programs being successful is that the virus signatures are
constantly being updated to catch all the new stuff.

Frankly, there are a lot of IT folks still who aren't really good at
understanding antivirus software.  That's the way it was at the
university library I used to work at as well as at a local college. 
Heck, there was a fairly recent 'attaboy' article about their IT guy
and the months it took him to fix all the damage done by viruses and
no mention of the fact that HE was the one responsible for keeping the
viruses out and did a crummy job of it because he, like so many
others, thought all he had to do was install antivirus software.

By the way, Norton and McAfee, among others, offer step-by-step
instructions on how to remove viruses and they very rarely require
reformatting the hard drive.  Just go to their website.