When you need it most.....

....is when your computer fudges up.

We've been pretty much virus, spyware, malware, and hacker attack free for a few years now.....
That ended Thursday.......when a bug got in during a Turbo Tax setup (their damn fuse "security" system....give me a break). I always expect some buggy-ness when the Mrs. installs TTax Pro, but it usually settles down after a day or two. This year TTax pro requires you to turn OFF your virus protection to install their software....and keep your Internet connection live. Needless to say something got in...something that corrupted my userinit.exe file. This probably would not have been a problem had I been using Comcast's free McAffee, or even AVG, but as it was I had been trying ZoneLabs Zone Alarm Internet security, which had a bug that would not allow it to update the A-V profiles correctly. I had been considering un-installing it before TTax this year, but we wanted to get the Mrs' "second" career in motion for this year (we both kind of have two careers of late, one we get a regular check for, and another we each really like, but can't fully commit to full time).
The damage was not immediate, but happened when opening up last years app to check some things, it required it be reinstalled....and again wanted the A-V off. Then the userinit.exe was corrupted, and was marked as bad by scandisk on boot up. I did get it going (after several hours), but some damage was done. If any more had been done, I would have had to reinstall XP Pro, which is a whole other can of worms when it comes to application registration and DRM permissions (especially since DRM backup or export is not available in WMP 11 (note: Do NOT upgrade to WMP 11 if you own a bunch of "plays 4 sure" DRM songs. WMP 11 is just one more reason to hate the Zune and MS's decision to drop their own "standard")......but I digress.

The Virus was W32.Tiniresu which is a pretty old virus (2004), and should have been blocked by several updates that are installed on my system, but it just goes to show ya......when it comes to computers....never, NEVER get complacent.

I'm once again trying Comcast's free McAffee, which has been repackaged in a Comcast wrapper and actually has a smaller footprint than previously (just the A-V alone, no firewall or anti-spyware from McAffe both are bloated). I tried AVG first, but It didn't even detect the virus (neither did Zone Labs), it's wiggy because both AVG and Zone Labs claim that W32.Tiniresu is in their databases. I tried to use Trend's live scan, but it kept locking up. McAffee found and removed it upon it's pre-installation scan (I was impressed). I thought that the virus had also queered the Windows Firewall and security center, but that was remnants from Zone Lab's disabling of those services.