Hey I'm trying to vaccinate my brand new Vista laptop, so I want to make sure I have nothing on here yet, any suggestions as to what rootkit scanner to use?

Oh and don't forget to announce when the book comes out I want to purchase it for sure.

Rootkits For Dummies was published in USA and Canada on January 30, 2007. Best price I've found so far is at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Rootkits-Dummies-Computer-Tech/dp/0471917109

Rootkits are not like other malware. You cannot vaccinate against them, but you can protect your computer.

Have you had the Vista laptop online yet? Best thing to do with a new, out-of-the-box computer before you take it online is make sure you have a firewall (a dedicated bi-directional, and definitely NOT the Windows Firewall), AV, AT and AS. Then make a full backup of everything on it to a seperate drive (even to CDs), just in case. So many people never make such backups regularly. Then when they get in trouble, they're hosed.

Rootkits need something else in order to load, such as a backdoor or other kind of trojan. If you guard against that stuff you will not likely have to deal with them.

We give suggestions in the book for applications you could use. We can provide some here too if you'd like.

You could download RKR (Rootkit Revealer) and post the log here. Don't try to interpret it yourself as all scanners will show false positives.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/RootkitRevealer.mspx

Free download is at the bottom of the page. RKR will only detect. It does not remove.

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Microsoft MVP Consumer Security 2006, 2007 & 2008

Does pulling it out of the box, setting up Vista, disabling the AV and AS that come with it then connecting to some random insecure Linksys network with it sound like a good idea that's what I did, but I did it to download and install AVG HJT Spybot and AdAware. I wasn't thinking and was just excited to have my computer after saving up my money for a year to by one. I bet my one local store has a copy of RK4D for like 10, it's a cheapie store.

Firewall first. I suppose you used the onboard one. I would suggest ZoneAlarm or Agnitum Outpost. Here's some words about why you might still wish to use ZA on Vista: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/04/zonelabs-zonealarm-vs-windows-vista.html

SuperAntiSpyware is the best right now: http://www.superantispyware.com/
And they have a freeware version.

For an Anti-Trojan I'd suggest A2: http://www.emsisoft.com/en/

Your HJT post for reference: /t180683-Vaccination.html

AVG-free is okay. I use it. Spybot S&D and Adaware are good too.

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Microsoft MVP Consumer Security 2006, 2007 & 2008

I can only afford free stuff, I really don't have money, but that rootkit revealer won't save a log for me, after it finishes it basically crashes. I doubt I have any though, but it would always be nice to be paranoid about it.

I prefer freeware too. I could buy a new computer every year for what I pay for Internet.

A friend of mine wrote this up:
http://wiki.castlecops.com/Roll_your_own_Free_Security_Suite

For backup I would suggest The Replicator (also free for personal use and it's in our book): http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp

Much, much easier to use, and quick. It will copy anything.

You might get IceSword. It can detect and remove: /t165203-IceSword_Instructions_in_English_Illustrated.html

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Microsoft MVP Consumer Security 2006, 2007 & 2008

Well IceSword doesn't work, I'm really beginning to hate Vista, AVG anti-spy doesn't work either. Their rootkit remover beta works as does their anti-vir, superanti-spy does too, plus HJT AdAware and Spybot, so I think I'll be ok, but I can't get any firewall to work, which is disturbingly funny.

There's a real problem with Vista's firewall capabilities. Read here: Vista Firewall Fails...

At least they are not putting anyone out of business in that respect.

How to Turn Off the Vista Firewall

You will need to turn it off before loading a new firewall such as ZoneAlarm.

HTH

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Microsoft MVP Consumer Security 2006, 2007 & 2008