Something is rotten in the state of… my computer. I’d tell you her name but I’m a little embarrassed by it now. That and it’s going to change, anyway, since I have to wipe everything and start from scratch.
Format C:
Not quite the evening I had planned but this was on my list of things to do. See, I was checking my internet usage stats for this billing cycle, like I always do, and then dropped my monocle (had I been wearing one). In a busy month with lots of uploading I can top out around 40GB, up & down combined. My shock at seeing 80 gigs on my account, 40 of which were uploads, continues days later. Several calls to Rogers — and it is always Rogers — yielded no answers. I’m not wireless. I don’t torrent. I don’t play WoW. Anymore. Haven’t been able to jump on Xbox Live for a while. So, uh, what the hell? The CS agents refused to believe that I wasn’t running an open wifi access point at first. HahaNO. I prefer wired 100% of the time and that’s certainly the way I work at home. They said they couldn’t tell me exactly what was being uploaded since that was apparently a very expensive process that they couldn’t authorize. I said I’d reformat, they’d make a note of that, and if I still have this problem in a week they will escalate further. Ugh. The problem does appear to be with that system though. I plugged in my tablet for the second half of the day and I’ve only used 327MB. 150 of which were HD YouTube videos because Dave Carroll is wonderful. This is in stark contrast to my behemoth PC which was uploading 100MB a minute after a clean boot. Uh-huh. Not good. netstat wasn’t helping me too much and my google-fu failed me to find a free in-depth bandwidth monitor. If anyone has one that they couldn’t live without, do drop me a line!
So, uh, in an unrelated query would anyone care to recommend free ways to best secure your Windows 7 machine? Pretty please?? :)
Microsoft Security Essentials, Avast, Comodo Personal Security Free are the wonderful suggestions I’ve received so far. I find it very telling that no one talks about AVG anymore.
I love the Tomato firmware on my router for monitoring traffic. You could look into that if you router supports it. I must really use a lot of bandwidth. I have never been below 80GB in a month. I am usually around 150 to 200 GB, and no, I don’t torrent either. Just a lot of podcasts and Netflix streaming.
Currently am using Security Essentials and the paid version of Malwarebytes Antimalware. The reason I’m using the paid version is it has real time protection….The full paid version is $25 and that is a one-time fee. It seems to be a good combo, I did add some of the Malwarebytes program files to the exclusions list on Security Essentials so that would play nice together..
I’ve never had the pleasure of a computer virus (knock on wood).
I will offer the following suggestions, though.
1. Do your mail online (hotmail/gmail), rather than on your system (outlook).
2. Firewall. Turn on the one in your router, and turn on the one in windows. Especially important if you have multiple computers on your network.
3. Malicious software removal tool. Comes with windows. Click on the start icon, or whatever they are calling it these days, and type in mrt.
4. Run an antivirus.
5. Browser – use Firefox, and run the NoScript plugin.
6. Behaviour. Be aware of where you surf, and what you open.
7. Insurance. As you already know, despite your best efforts, your system will still get attacked. So insurance in the form of a backup is absolutely important. Some external drives, perhaps?
Did you check to see if the Steam or Microsoft put out any big updates?
Perhaps running Astaro or BSD on an old pc may help.
Maybe one of your consoles is hacked and is grabbing anything on the local lan.
Re: “So, uh, in an unrelated query would anyone care to recommend free ways to best secure your Windows 7 machine? Pretty please?? :)”
Talk to Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte, they could answer your question on Security Now.
http://twit.tv/sn
Microsoft Security Essentials would be a good beginning.
http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/