I think I'll stay out of this one.....

I had no idea mobile phones could be so emotive....

Welcome to the forum. There's always all sorts of lenses in the classifieds section to help feed your apparently already developing LBA...............

Welcome to the forum!

Not wanting to follow the herd, I bought a Nokia N97 a while ago. It has 32gb (expandable by sd card), a 5mp camera, a nifty slide-out keyboard and a touchscreen. I have regretted not getting an iPhone ever since. The thing about the iPhone is the sheer number of widgets, accessories, programs (Apps I suppose is the term) and it seems to work well and has a very nifty touchscreen. It hasn't got much of a camera, but I doubt anyone here will be buying a phone for its camera.

I can't even find a screen cover for the Nokia, it keeps telling me the memory is full (you continuously have to clear the cache) and it sometimes crashes. The battery life is it's one saving grace, it lasts for about 3 days with regular usage.

For my next phone, I will resist the urge to be different and get an iPhone. The Nexus is probably going not going to have the mass appeal of the iPhone. Sometimes it pays to follow the herd, because they always want new apps and accessories, and the huge user base of herd economics makes that economically viable.

Ok Mike point taken! Perhaps I am a bit behind the times, I was put off Norton years ago and never considered it again. I'll have a look at it, as AVG are perhaps not so keen on keeping their free version up to date as a company that has a vested financial interest. AVG's strategy seems to be to keep trying to convince you that you need their fully paid up version, so I have thought about switching AV protection for a while.

Interesting all the negative feedback on AVG, I've never had a problem myself but maybe it's time for a change: it seems a few users on here have had serious problems with it. I've never liked Norton, it seems to slow computers down. I had a free year of it with a new computer once, and it seemed very processor-hungry. My wife uses Avast which so far seems pretty good. Dos anyone have any feedback on it?

Or maybe I should take my fellow aliens advice and just erase everything and start again behind an impenetrable layer of firewalls?

Thanks Darlene for the joint third place! I wouldn't have placed at all had my other half got her entry in on time, it's great to see her taking part, and a cracking picture!Excellent firstand second placed shots, and my fellow third placer too! Great judging, there were some great shots and it was fun!

AVG doesn't work very well if you have other anti-virus software on your computer. Were you using all of them at once? I've never had a problem with AVG. I think all anti-virus programs can be vulnerable to new infections if the updates are not produced quick enough.

As most of the "worms" were attached to your browser history they will have been adware, which although a nuisance are not malicious in themselves. They basically monitor your browsing history so you can be targeted with ads, normally pop-ups which are easy to block. I would suspect you only had one serious infection.

amoringello, to call my suggestion "foolhardy" is to make an assumption that you know what my level of experience in computers is, which obviously you don't. I also see nothing in your posts that indicates you have any depth of knowledge on the subject. Perhaps try running Ccleaner and/or Malwarebytes on your own computer and see how quick you are to reformat your drive? They will always find something, as adware is an ongoing issue. I recently removed 1.8 gb of adware from a colleagues computer. To set the record straight, my experience dates back to DOS and includes removal of worms, viruses, trojans and other malware from a number of computers. Most recently, this involved re-writing registry keys in safe mode on a work colleagues infected computer after it crashed completely and he could not get access to any of his data, which he had not backed up. It took me a whole day but I got it working, and clean.

To reformat a drive, and then install back-ups taken from the same computer, (especially taken after the infection was discovered, if I understand James's previous posts corectly) is a waste of time as the back-ups most likely will also be infected. Scanning the drive the back-ups have been put on will not neccessarily isolate them before they re-infect the host computer. Most viruses and trojans will jump from a drive to a computer as soon as the drive is connected. Some will create a dormant copy of themselves that can either be remotely activated or work on a timer.

It is far safer and less time-consuming to remove the infections from the computer they are on. Malware bytes is a perfectly adequate tool for this. Ccleaner is a good tool for ongoing adware removal. The best solution long-term is a bootable back-up disk that contains an image of your whole computer, including all files and the operating system. I use Acronis, but Symantec Ghost is another option. Regular scans with Ccleaner and Malwarebytes, in conjunction with a good anti-virus program (I have been using AVG Free since it's inception with no problems whatsover) should keep your computer healthy.

The first thing most trojans or viruses do is remove the restore points from your computer, so you cannot restore your computer to a previous state. If this happens, you know you have a srious infection, and can restore your data from a bootable recovery disk should it prove too difficult to remove or isolate the infection. To date I have only had to do this once (this after someone else had been using my computer). This will restore your computer to a pre-infected state.

I would suggest, James, that you run Malwarebytes on all your computers again now, and implement a regular program of cleaning up your computer with that and Ccleaner, which is also free. It can be downloaded here. link Stay away from other adware programs, as a lot of them are in fact adware themselves.

Limewire is notrious for viruses: if your son insists on downloading stuff at least get him to use a torrent, where the files are downloaded in pieces from multiple computers and so he is less likely to download a compltete virus.