A Short Anti-Virus Odyssey

Earlier today:

The moment of truth had arrived. I was ready...

yes, ready to upgrade my anti-virus software. One way or another, I WOULD do whatever it took to get the job done. Regardless of the consequences. But there were big decisions to be made. Big, BIG decisions.

For you see, on the one hand, I could upgrade to the newest free version of AVG Anti-Virus. I still had version 7.1 installed on my computer. But version 7.5 had been available for days. DAYS. Possibly even weeks. Woe is me! Here I was, computing around and about with inferior, outdated software. Oy vey... (or whatever) what's a boy to do?

BUT! On the other hand, there was the AOL sponsored Active Virus Shield. This was all new to me. I'd only heard about it recently. And mind you, I'm not an AOL fan. Let's just leave it at that. But, the fact remained that they had struck a deal with a very reputable anti-virus company to offer a free version of their software, initially for AOL users only. It was rated very highly. More highly, in point of fact, than even the old reliable... yes, yes... AVG Anti-Virus. Oh, I know. But it's all true.

I decided that, even though AVG had served me well down through the years (2? 3 years? more?) that I needed to change with the times. I needed to be open to the possibilities. Yes! That's it! That's what I would do. I would make the switch. NoooOOOOOOOOOOOoooo..........

Yes.

Oh yes. Do it.

I, well, you see, I just, well... ok. I'll just spit it out. I UN-INSTALLED AVG ANTI-VIRUS. Then, I installed Active Virus Shield. But it wasn't that simple. Oh no. For you see, a re-boot was involved. I'm serious. Then, of course, there was the program update to get the latest protection. Finally, I ran the first full scan with my new software.

Guess what happened. Can you guess? I thought not. So I'll just tell you that it aPpEaRS that Active Virus Shield could maybe possibly be better than, well, what I was using before. The fact of the matter is that it found both a trojan and a malware item amongst my stuff. It offered to try and neutralize them, but was unable to do so in either case. Both files were items I was okay with deleting and that was the only option.

The trojan had, at some point, latched onto a simple (Notepad) text file I'd created quite some time ago. I'm a curious guy. I shouldn't have, but I did attempt to open it before deleting it. Originally it was just a few notes jotted down as a reminder of, well, something that seemed important at the time. But now, I couldn't open it. MY TEXT FILE DENIED ME ACCESS. Well, of course it wasn't a simple text file anymore. It was something more. Something darker. Ominous. And apparently... impenetrable. So I deleted it.