More on this

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Here's a good reference point from which to start:

There's a huge difference between having the dough
for a yacht and keeping one file for testing anti-
virus programs. Tell me where to go to download
the little music program and I'll do it. On-demand
scan it with Bit Defender--that's all I'm asking.

I'm familiar with HiJack This, but asking people to
recognize it by "HJT" is asking a lot. It's not
that well known. A few more keystrokes won't kill
you or make you look less cool.

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A custom Bart PE disk can make you look
like a God. I've become fairly well known
at the school I attend (I'm 44 and am attending
a trade school in order to change careers).
Other students know where to find me (the
computer/electronics/telecom/wireless
networking lab where I prepped for the A+).
Most every week I end up straightening out
at least one or two computers. It's good
` experience and I never turn down a chance
to try and fix a computer. Most are software
issues like virus infections. In fact the
huge majority are such. Hardware problems
are rare even though many of the owners
think that's what's wrong. For example,
last week I dealt with a Dell laptop where
the display would randomly shut off. At
first it appeared to be a hardware issue
(the display backlight), but in the end
it was malware. I installed Bit Defender
from a hard drive in an enclosure (another
of my favorite little toys), updated it and
ran it. It found 20+ malware programs.
After a half-day (4 hours) of cleaning it
up the little laptop was working fairly well.

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stiff you.

And even then maybe you forgive them.
The trick for a virus author is to be clever.
Being one of the first to see a new variant
is not impossible.

FYI, a good but mostly unknown program that
can be used as a second line of on-demand
defense is A-squared free. It can be configured
to where there is basically no trace of it on a
box for the most part (manually disable all options
and services):
http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/free/
That means it can truly co-exist with other
security software without causing any issues.
It's another program I use contextually that
seems to be an above-average detector.

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Personally, I think you're at a level where Bit Defender
with all options unchecked and nothing else would be
appropriate. You knew what you were doing when you
danced with the little music program. You don't need
a program that looks over your shoulder (checks every
file you open and every action you take). If you choose
to run both, be aware of the services that may conflict.
Disable the Bit Defender services until you need/want to
use the program. They are: bdss, vsserv, livesrv and xcomm.
Further, I suggest trying the Bit Defender / A-Squared
combo. To that you can also add Spybot. Every two weeks
I manually update and run all three along with a backup of
everything critical. Because I have a clue, they never find
anything--but I always do it all just the same.

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I've just run into a situation that brought me to the conclusion that
Bit Defender isn't particularly special.

So, the quoted paragraph above makes me look like an idiot.
I have to accept that. See below:

Even though I religiously scan all downloaded executables manually
and know the difference between safe and risky business online,
recently I ended up with an annoying variant of the Trojan Vundo.
As far as I can tell, this variant goes by: Vundo.euo which, trust me,
isn't widely known. My recommended combo of Bit Defender Free V10 and
A2 Free didn't see it coming. And, after the fact, Bit Defender didn't
recognize all of the infected files. It found one--but that wasn't
enough to stop it. A2 Free didn't see any of it--even at the height
of the infection.

Here's the deal with this variant: On an XP box it prevents Explorer
from running. That means you have no taskbar--no start menu--just the
background. Newbies won't know how to deal with that at all.
Guys in the know will know to give a three-finger-salute (alt-ctrl-del)
to bring up task manger and then manually start another instance (be it
crippled) of explorer. From there the box is usable but slow.

There is more to explain, but I'll cut to the chase.

In my 12 years of experience this was one of the worst infections I've
ever had to clear--and it was on my own box! In the end, HJT (Hi-Jack
This) was the key. It exposed a key file that when deleted took out
the bulk of the infection. From there it was just a mop-up operation
(delete orphaned files and registry entries).

So, there you have it.

Feel free to respond and post your own stories.