[Closed] Virus in bundled software - AAAAGGGGHHHH!

Advice needed: Should I remove McAfee and just rely on the built-in Windows security features?

always

The bundled software must have had a trojan virus as added extra. Removing it has been a real pain.

What was the virus?

That's bad!

I'd use just the MS anti-virus with regular malwarebytes scans personally.

So after telling us have you told Asus? They would probably like to know so at least they can check it out.
At what point did you find the trojan? Was it before you connected to the internet and before you put anything onto the machine?

and yes remove mcaffee,mcnorton,mcavg or anything else like that.

What has disappointed me is that the McAfee software did not eliminate the virus as it emerged,

McAfee is bloat where it's as bad as a Virus.

I haven't got a note of the Trojan name here at work, it emerged as the propriety Asus crap (picture editor, cloud storage etc etc) was unpacking itself, The machine was connected to the internet but I hadn't started downloading any other software etc.

I sent an email to Asus at the weekend. No reply yet.

So was it's a virus or was it Asus bloating your PC?

So it may not have been an actual trojan/virus but rather McAfee just reporting suspicious behavior due to Asus sending stuff home during startup. That seems more likely really

edit:oooo, Drac is so fast

The symptom was that, on opening a new page/ link, the web browser was redirected to pages advertising all manner of shite (anti-virus software, pills, holidays etc etc).

I ran a full scan using the McAfee crap and it found 6 viruses.

Disappointing that it didn't isolate them as they emerged.

if it was just a browser redirect then it may just be how the home/new tab page is set up in your browser. McAfee detecting 6 viruses is more of a problem though, it would be interesting to know what they were.

The browser redirect think is probably not a virus technically, so could have been missed. Serious problem for Asus. Personally I'd give John Lewis a call too, they will be helpful.

Was it definitely a new machine. Box hadn't been opened before? Just wondered if it was possible that it had been sold and returned after being used for a short time without being cleaned up properly?

Quite a few things show up as Trojans / advertising malware which aren't really viruses. I used to use AVG anti-virus always found that the best, even the free one. Bundled anti-virus is just another company trying to sell you stuff you don't need.

The only time I've ever had a virus on a Windows machine was one that I had just bought - IIRC it was the last one in stock, and I'm guessing that someone in the store had been using it before sale.

I spent a few hours trying to sort it out, but in the end I did a clean Windows install - if your new laptop came with recovery disks (and you don't plan on returning it) I'd recommend doing the same.