I’m not sure how well this works. Yes, Microsoft and free in the same sentence is rare. Right now I am using Panda Cloud and like it. But yesterday I worked on a system behind web restrictions and Panda could not access the internet. Microsoft Security Essentials may have been a good alternative. Worth a try. You do need to pass validation.
And Microsoft Security Essentials needs "fixing" sometimes? Who knew? Here is a little program to do it.
I get tired of Avira/AVG etc. and all the updates and splash screens … blah, blah. That is why I went to Panda.
If your PC is totally in the toilet and a virus is suspected I would recommend a fresh OS install after backing up your data. You may try a rescue CD and get the old girl going. Here is a good list of CD downloads. 13 Antivirus Rescue CDs Software Compared in Search For the Best Rescue Disk
Here are a few other ideas.
DrWebCurit
Combofix
Trojan Remover
HiJack This
WinsockXPfix (If net broken after fooling around.) (Vista/Win7 is supposed to do this natively)
Kaspersky Portable
Stinger McAfee
AVG Rescue CD
Edit: MSE turns off (by default) Windows Defender. My problem is that on start up I receive a message that Windows Defender is turned off ... Dah! I find no fix for this yet. Defender is a sticky little bugger, how Norton like. I am tempted to run the fix file mentioned above. A work in progress.
