[stylin_geek]

Yeah, not only do I avoid “free anti virus” but the three major players have issues, too. McAfee, Symantec and now Trend Micro have turned what used to be decent products into junk that is overly invasive, with way too many “features” that can’t be turned off.

The worst offender, though, has to be McAfee. I’ve run into corporate installs that are impossible to uninstall unless one does a ton of research. It’s so bad, I’ve gone in and manually turned off the process and then disabled it.

[Non-Sequitur]

To begin with, thank you for all the advice and assistance.

I tried the Malwarebytes but it turns out that this particular virus blocks access to sites like malwarebytes as well as my Norton and Symantec. You can ping the site but cannot access it via IE or Mozilla. I finally had to get a tech in and he's taken it to his shop where they can slave my system to one of their hard drives and remove the virus without needing Internet access. All in all it's a royal pain in the posterior. The only good news is that the tech says while the virus is aggravating all my financial information isn't in danger of being grabbed by the wrong person. So that's something anyway.

Thanks again to everyone.

[PSYCHO-FREEP]

I use and like Norton. This very virus came in the other day and tried to identify itself as a Norton alert. I just cleared it normally by closing it (Don't use the red x box, hit cancel instead, or else just shut down immediately with cont. alt. del. and for added safety, leave the mouse alone.

McAfee is one I refuse to use as well. I'm not sure about Panda though, I haven't used it in several years.

[Petruchio]

the three major players have issues, too. McAfee, Symantec and now Trend Micro have turned what used to be decent products into junk that is overly invasive, with way too many “features” that can’t be turned off.

I have been using Trend Micro for years. Nevermore. I will not renew it again. Too much crap I can't control.