Hi SC,
Again you're welcome..
Re: Norton. From the HJT list, it looks like you're running The 2003/4 AntiVirus package. That's all it's intended to do.. catch viruses. What you had was malware. This is the sort of thing that Adaware, Spybot and Spyware blaster is built specifically to catch.
The Norton product designed to do this is call NIS (Norton Internet Security) and the 2005 version is out now. As far as what products to use, I can tell you what's installed on my machine, and I don't get caught out.. (famous last words).
That is...
AVG 7.0 Anti-Virus
Zone Alarm Firewall
SpywareBlaster, which prevents automatic downloads of all malware listed in it's database, and of course, Spybot and Adaware. Spybot's Immunize feature also runs silently in the background, and lets you know of any changes to the registry.
All the above need regular updating (and running, you'd be surprised how many install them and don't ever use thm).. once a week is good enough, unless you see warnings all over the news or forums of a new problem.
AVG updates automatically (just tell it when) and also gives you protection against malicious emails, and adds a note to that effect at the bottom of each. This is especially useful with OE, as you otherwise wouldn't find out until you've opened the message to view the contents.. too late by then. Above all, they're free and do the job well.
Another couple of programs you may want to consider are..
SpywareGuard
and
IE-SpyAd.
Those should be more than enough to protect even the most err.. inquisitive
of net users. This machine is on and connected to the web for probably 16 hours a day. Admittedly this is my new XP SP2 machine, but the above served me well on my late W98 machine, where MS security updates were the subject of misty-eyed nostalgia.
No product/s will guarantee absolute and complete protection, but you'll be as safe as is practicable with all of the above installed.
Hope that helps. Just ask if you, or anyone else here, wants more advice/info and I'll be happy to help. And I'll even add my hardly ever used signature to this, just for the hell of it.
Cheers
Liam
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A member of the
Alliance of Security Analysis Professionals since 2004.