Loosing everything

[Violated]

Well the other day i was just doing the usual i opened IE ( for one of the only 2 reasons i open IE, Udates and ircspy. Cause firefox wouldn't copy the request text for a file to the clipboard and im to lazy to find a way to fix it. Everything was fine until im hit with spyware, hijackers, trojans, the list goes on. I am forced to reformate and reinstall. Needless to say im mad lost almost everything ( everything that matters ) loads of custom irrecoverable data. Took me all night but got almost everything back to the way it was. Plus a new found sense to get a little more serious about security ( Zone Alarm, AVG, scheduling spybot and adaware to check for updates and scan atleast once a week, turning on auto updates for windows, disabling IE so i never accidentally use it to browse sites ) Also it was nice to reinstall and have a legit version of windows ( emachines being the loveable people they are would not recognize my issue the first time i tried reinstalling with the restore dvd ) it would lock up at the setting up network connection phase because of an issue with the modem drivers. so i was forced to use a family members copy which worked fine untill windows released windows genuine software which prevented me from getting updates. Now that i am unable to activate that windows key i was left to one option, the restore dvd from emachines which still had the issue of locking up a the network connections. Then it was time to try emachines support in which they informed me that my issues was now a know issue and they had a fix for it, they gave me intructions to get to an alternate windows setup ran through it and entered the cd key they provided so i dont have to activate windows and bam i am back in buisness with legit windows xp. now only if i could recover my lost custom files i would be good to go, could use a data recovery tool but i know of no free ones and cant find any googling it.

[Hit~Me]

Well I have been putting off the task of doing the same thing. I am going to have to devote the 8 hrs and do it soon

[CDS-101]

ah i know that feeling all too well, the next time my computer tries something similar im probably going to drag it out in the woods and blow the circuits out with a shotgun

[Maks]

Well for security of my computer I use the virus scanner Avast Antivirus Home Edition (Free to get at www.avast.com) and it works just fine. Never have any trouble with virusses or trojans. For spyware I just got 2 programs, which you actually said were pretty good to use a pretty while back.. Spybot Search and Destroy and Ad-Aware. Oh and I also use Mozilla Firefox for internet. Since I use this pretty simple setup for security it maybe gives a virus or 2 every 3 months or so. And if I got a virus, I search it.. and delete it. And it's all free and legit. You could give it a try unless somebody knows something better.