Hi Max !
Every one you mentioned, I tried, and the online scanners - likely all the ones you can think of. McAfee AVERT Stinger latest online, Norton (both onboard which after awhile I suspected had been tampered with, and online), Panda online, Trend online, all over and over round and round just constant scanning and came up clean for ten days. Coming up clean, I ran Adaware, Swatit Trojan, Spybot, anything I could think of or come up with on Google, came up clean. I perused WilderSecurity which I’ve learned to depend on their advice for years as it’s worked without fail, and did all that was suggested that I hadn’t already been doing. I even was punching in all the ports I was being probed on (every two minutes for days on end from masked IP’s hoping to find any reference at all of a Virus name and when I would, I’d go run the ‘removal tool’ from different big-name sites, Symantec first then all the others, and all came up with nothing. Finally, Bitdefender’s found 95 files. I mean, how can they all miss 95 :-\
I run on startup: Norton Antivirus 2004 up-to-the-minute-manually-updated-definitions daily I don’t even wait for live-update, Spywareblaster, Spywareguard, Spysites, DiamondCS Wormguard, ZoneAlarm, Blackice (newest, with popup-permissions for everything manually setup and a password on it), Sygate Personal Firewall, XP’s firewall is enabled as well though we all likely know that’s next to wishful thinking to even use that one smiles at ya. I pathologically check for all of them their software version updates every three to five days, and for definitions every single day at startup. Brand new machine not two months old now tickin like a clock for two months straight from the box, XP Home and Windows-Updated daily on startup. There is nothing more I can do to update this thing, it’s a textbook example of ‘updated’. I’ve even got all my lsass abilities disabled because I don’t need them myself on this machine, so there’s noway even THAT can be exploited lol. Been runnin like this with the same software for five years straight, 24/7 on a cable modem working, and this is the first time ever anything ever got by all that, so I’m still feeling lucky. But this thing, this was a real loser to get rid of !
I think it’s obvious now too, that there is noway in heck I’m gonna continue using Symantec either, it appears whatever it was was able to redirect all the Symantec program events to other than where they were supposed to be going (as in live update errored etc) and perhaps Norton Antivirus wasn’t even really scanning emails incoming at all anymore. So um, if something is able to turn it off, then it’s not tight enoough for me. Even if it were the best (which it’s not), I’d still be telling myself now that the odds are more in favor of me betting on an antivirus that COULD be tight, than continuing to bet on one that FAILED lol. So whoosh goes Symantec out the door, and in comes the totally different make of antivirus I purchased yesterday.
Thanks for replying Max, I really appreciate that ! Wishing you the best of days !
LWS