Smadav - antivirus made in Indonesia

Antivirus is a must in every computer system. Since there so many viruses all over the internet, we should have enough protection from viruses. I think we should have at least two type of antivirus from geographical view, i.e. foreign antivirus and local antivirus. If you are from Indonesia, and you want to get free antivirus, I would recommend "Smadav". It's a simple and fast scanning antivirus made by antivirus experts from Indonesia. Smadav also comes with professional version. To get professional version, you just need to donate. How much? It's up to you. You may also upload viruses to help them create the antivirus. Click here to download the latest version of Smadav.

SMADAV - Indonesia local antivirus

Smadav is an antivirus made in Indonesia. This antivirus detects and cleans Indonesia local viruses. It also works as a protection for your flash disk against autorun.inf viruses. It's also very fast and small in size. The whole interface is green and seems to be quite user-friendly.

For updating, it seems to be a bit harder when you are using the free version. You need to download and reinstall the antivirus again and again for the updates, unless you donate and get the registration key. If you register the antivirus, your Smadav will update automatically and also it works 10 times faster in scanning.

In protecting your flash disk, it creates a protection folder on your flash disk. You can store any Office work files in the folder. And every time a flash is plugged in the USB port, Smadav will scan it automatically.

Smadav also works well with international antivirus such, Avira, AVG and Avast. So, you'll have better protection against viruses.

How to remove TR/Crypt.XPACK.Gen

Have you ever encountered this trojan (detected by Avira Antivir)? This trojan can always be detected by Avira Antivir but it cannot be removed totally by Avira. When you choose to delete, at the first time, you probably think that it will be removed. But the truth is not. On the next boot of your Windows, you will see the detection again, and you'll repeat the deletion and this will go on and on. Then how to remove this trojan TR/Crypt.XPACK.Gen easily?


Well, you can use Panda Antivirus to remove it. To do this, 
First you need to open the link to the website using Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. 
You'll then see the website. Click Scan Your PC Now button. 
After that, you'll be asked to download the ActiveScan 2.0 plugin.
Save and then Open it and it will then be installed in your Firefox or Internet Explorer browser.
Next, click the link again and click Scan Your PC Now button again.
This time, you'll go through the installation of ActiveScan 2.0 and the updating process.
It will take a few minutes to finish this.
Let Panda Antivirus to scan and when finish and virus encountered, you just click Fix all.

Remove Autorun Virus on Flash Disk

Virus which infects flash disk is a very common thing that happens in daily computing. This is probably because mostly people use flash disk to keep their data and tranfer them. This way of plugging in and out from a usb port is also very easy to get the flash disk infected by viruses.

The most common kind of virus, which antivirus usually detected on my flash disk is the virus that uses autorun.inf to invoke itself into memory. Sometimes, this kind of virus can be easily detected but rather hard to be removed. This kind of virus also infects harddisk and other media as well.

Normally, people use antivirus to remove viruses. But, I have ever met a situation where viruses can't be removed although it can be detected by antivirus. When we choose to delete the infected files or the virus file, it seems to be deleted. But a while later, it appears again. Really annoying!

The easiest way to remove virus is of course format the media which has been infected by the virus, if possible using a virus-free clean operating system such as Linux live cd. But this of course cost you a lot of time, and effort to reinstall the operating system as well as the programs. This is not really advisable unless it's the only way, because at least we need to back up the data on the media before formatting (usually this is harder when it happens to harddisk).

But the situation is different when it's on flash disk. If the virus is just an autorun-type virus, we can easily remove by using the formatting flash disk method. I have ever met that kind of situation. My antivirus could detect the virus that time but could not remove it cause it came back right after the deletion. So, I thought perhaps I should copy the data first. I did that smoothly, the data were transferred to harddisk and the antivirus detected the virus again. But the antivirus seemed to be able to stop the virus from infecting my harddisk. Luckily, I got the data without the virus.

After having the data copied, I formatted the flash disk, and this time I successfully removed the autorun virus from my flash. Then, I copied back the files which I had moved to my harddisk to the flash disk again. And that's how I removed the autorun virus on flash disk which could be detected, but couldn't be removed by antivirus.

Reducing risk of downloading virus infected program

Searching and downloading a program from an unknown site is something quite risky. So, it's better to download from a site like: http://www.download.com if you want to search for a program. On this site, sometimes you can see reviews by visitors or those who have downloaded or used the program. By this way, you can reduce the first risk. It's also my trusted site for downloading freeware.

Then another precaution for downloading is to look at the date when the program added to the database. If the program is about a year old, even without review, it's still safer to download compared to those with newer date added program. This is to ensure that with newer database of our antivirus, the antivirus can detect older viruses. If the file already infected by viruses, then at least your antivirus probably has known it as a virus because it's older than the database. It could possibly be detected rather than those newly created file which has probably been infected by new viruses. This is just a common sense and just a piece of advice from me. Perhaps, you don't think so. And actually I am not saying 0% risk, but I am saying lower risk only.

Always update your antivirus. This is the best precaution. If the updating involves antivirus database and antivirus engine, you should update both. Cause updating both will make the antivirus program run perfectly.

And these are the precaution steps for reducing risk on downloading. Search for more posts on antivirus or protection against virus on my blog. Also don't forget to install an anti-spyware like Spyware Doctor.

Caution against downloaded files

Here are two things to remember when you want to download a new program or an add-on for your browser.

First, be careful when downloading.
Make sure your antivirus is working and updated. It's really easy to be infected by virus when you have no antivirus installed, if possible use more than one antivirus. I myself use two: avira antivir and avast antivirus (As long as your computer doesn't hang after installing the second antivirus, I think it's still ok). Installing two antivirus running together also means higher protection against viruses because both antivirus probably have different virus database.

Second, be careful after downloading.
Scan your downloaded files after download is also a protection against virus. Or perhaps you want to let your antivirus detect the virus when it appears. This is still ok. If it's possible to clean or the virus, take this action first. Otherwise, move it to quarantine.

This article is posted after I downloaded a file from:
http://cursormania.smileycentral.com/download/firefox_install.jhtml
You can also try downloading it as experience. But try it at your own risk.

After downloading, I ran the setup, but during installation, my antivir pop up and said that it detected a virus. See, how useful it is to have two antivirus installed because when one antivirus cannot detect, perhaps another can. And most of all, antivirus with up-to-date database is more important than many antivirus but with outdated database.

Copying antivirus file to a CD-R or CD-RW

It's very easy to copy file to a flash disk when we want to move our work to another computer. It's also very easy to get viruses infected by using this way. This is because flash disk can't be write protected when you use, unlike floppy disk. So, you have to scan the flash disk frequently.

Another way to safely transfer files which we can use is to use the CD-RW. Nowadays, it's quite easy to burn some files to a CD-RW using Windows XP or later. Why should we use CDR or CDRW? The main reasons are:

1. CD-RW is rewriteable, so when we don't need the files anymore, we can just delete them.
2. It won't be infected by viruses, cause it takes time to burn the virus program in it. :)
I believe no small programs or viruses can do this. Or if there is, it will really slow down the computer or the chance of getting virus is really really small. Or it's really impossible if you use the CDR in an ordinary CD ROM drive (I mean not CD writer).

This is what I do, when I think it's risky to use my flash disk in someone's computer that I suspect it to have a lot of viruses. I also do this when I help my friends clean the viruses of their computer. Install the antivirus right from CD is safer than directly from flash disk.

Can't save Excel file

Microsoft Excel is my favorite spreadsheet program. Last Sunday, I created a spreadsheet using Microsoft Excel but I couldn't finish the work that day. So, the next day, I went to work as usual and continued the spreadsheet again at my work place. But what amazed me was that I couldn't save my work. I saved to another temporary files. And every time I wanted to save I got the same message that the file was saved to another name. I was quite puzzled why did it happen. It also meant that my work seemed to have more trouble in saving files.

Then I took noticed on my Avast antivirus. I found that it scanned my file-saving process. After that, I disabled the Avast antivirus to see whether it could remove trouble of the saving process. And I really did. The saving process worked normally when the antivirus had been disabled.

I just want to show a tip on this post: "When you find a trouble in saving, it could be an unallowed process by your antivirus."

N.B. It's also a bit risky disabling the antivirus. Make sure you scan the file later cause Excel file could be infected by macro virus.