Techies are not immune to viruses

It was bound to happen to me eventually. Over the weekend, my computer got a virus. Well, it didn't really get a virus. More like a virus wasted a bunch of my valuable time.

The reason I didn't actually get the virus is because I use Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare anti-virus program. And it did its job. Sort of.

Close, but no cigar

As soon as the virus was detected, OneCare popped up a message letting me know about the virus and gave me an option to clean the virus. I thought all was good until a few minutes later, I noticed that OneCare's status was critical (the icon turns red in the Windows status bar). Somehow my automatic Windows updates were disabled. As soon as I turned them back on, Internet Explorer automatically opened by itself and started displaying a bunch of spammy "your computer needs cleaning" messages. At this moment I knew I was in trouble.

So I rebooted my computer only to have OneCare once again pop up and tell me I had a virus. I repeated the cleaning process and sure enough, OneCare's status immediately went critical for the same exact reason as before.

It turns out that OneCare was capable of detecting and cleaning the virus, but not capable of preventing the virus from re-invoking itself minutes later.

What's a techie to do?

I knew what I had to do next so I switched over to my laptop and started searching Google for information about the virus. I quickly found the information I needed but I was a little suspicious of the remedy since it mentioned a web site I was not familiar with. It's all too easy these days to create a web site that pretends to help you fix a virus when what it does in reality is give you a virus.

There are times when even a techie like me needs to consult another techie. So I texted my computer repair expert, Regina Miller from Geek in Pink and asked her if she was familiar with the virus. Regina told me she had dealt with several viruses like the one I mentioned and told me to download Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware software.

This made me feel good since this is the same software that I read about on my Google search results. I asked Regina if I could trust the software and she said absolutely but reminded me to only download the software from a trusted link (good advice) such as the one on CNET's web site.

Several hours I'll never get back

Another Google search landed me on CNET's download page for the Anti-Malware software and I was off and running. A few minutes later, I had the software installed and scanning my computer. The scan took a while but had no trouble identifying and cleaning the virus.

I wish I could tell you that this all happened in the span of an hour but it didn't. Instead, my computer was out of commission for the good part of the day on Saturday. And although I won the war, the battles were both painful and unnecessary.