i like that old time rock n roll

This afternoon I noticed that my laptop was infected with a few viruses/spyware etc..... and not just a little infected but a lot infected.
I found:

• vundo
• virtumonde
• pandex
• goldun
• smitfraud
• and a handful of other rogue cleaners and trojans

The worst part is that I brought this upon myself. I'm a firm believer that you really don't need a whole lot of sophisticated antivirus antispam etc. applications running. Just don't open rogue executables and stay away from untrusted sites. Whenever I follow my own advice my laptop is clean as a whistle. That said, today I had the urge to play some classic Starcraft (fun!), but the constant whirring of the game's cd was really annoying (not fun). I decided to go searching for a no-cd crack online.... I own the game, I have a valid license key...what's the harm in getting a no-cd crack to stop that annoying whirring of my cd drive????

Well, plenty. Unfortunately I didn't follow my own advice and downloaded and ran half a dozen [useless] patches before realising the obvious -- my computer was infected.

Now, to get to the point of this little story.... none of my stinking antivirus/antispam programs work! I tried clamwin, kaspersky labs, panda, Spyware Doctor (endorsed by Google), virtumundobegone, vundofix.... none of them worked. period. Sure, they were great at detecting the malware, but they all seemed to be lacking in the removal of the malware.

After numerous scans and restarts I came across a program called SUPERantispyware (www.superantispyware.com). It's AMAZING. It doesn't do your taxes or anything, but it actually does what is advertised: detection AND removal of malware. wonderful, A+++.