Re-asking with more details / Re: I found virus with Ad-ware & can I be assured my computer is 'safe' now?

Question

I found a Trojan with Ad-aware, which then removed it for me. Can I rest assured it's dealt with, properly?

And, whether or not, I can rest assured it's dealt with, what other precautions should I take? I think changing critical passwords is an obvious one, but what else? This particular Trojan was described as "logging keystrokes and transmitting them to a remote server", which is obviously a little frightening, but the ultimate precaution of reinstalling Windows 7 is a bit too laborious, if it's not necessary. P.S. it was found within a few e-books (mostly PDFs, possibly .chm files) - these from a large batch of E-books I had downloaded via a torrent, over a year ago! Not liking that part.
32 minutes ago - 4 days left to answer.

Additional Details

More Details:

I also ran a full AVG antivirus scan previous to installing adaware, and it did not pick it up. I also have Comodo Firewall installed. I update both frequently. Chances are I may have never even open those ebooks in question. But I'm not certain, I wish I had written that down or could check a log in a way. It's a bit draconian fixing problems like this. So it'd be best if I could think it's dealth with. After adaware prompting me to reboot to remove the trogan, I disabled AVG and installed Microsoft Security Essentials and ran a full scan on that. Nothing found. I also ran mrt.exe (start menu > run > mrt.exe) which is Malicious Software Removal Tool, that comes with Windows (or Windows updates on older systems) - Any further steps required?
11 minutes ago

For browsers, I use 3, but mostly Chrome these days, I specifically (usually) use IE for critical accounts only.
8 minutes ago

Answer 1

With high probability, the trojan found in the books was not active, or you would find it in system files where it would replicate itself, or in registry. So, you should not worry too much about this one.

However, if you care for security so much, change AVG free to something better: AVAST, Avira have free versions and have more all-around security compared to AVG free. AVG strips down its free version by removing some detection engines (like rootkit one).

Answer 2

Use a couple of AV programs, let them do the checking... do a google on the trojan, u will find details of how to manually remove it.... run the Microsoft online scan, do the Sophos free rootkit scan.....

ok a pain in the a$$ but at least then u are a bit more comfortable about being clean.



have a look at task manager and look at the processes that are running do a google search on the, to see what they are.... you can also run 'hijack this' a program that lets you look at running processes and see what they are doing, get rid of them etc



When you are happy with everything being safe, develop a security state of mind and make sure u ALWAYS us an AV, and it is ALWAYS up to date.... I d/l torrents too, but always make sure I have my av running.

Answer 3

Theoretically its possible to make virus etc for all system and OS. However other than IBM comparable systems and Microsoft OS there is very few virus or ad-wares made for Mac and Linux. There are Anti-virus available for all the OS like Apple Macintosh, Various Linux, Sun Solaris, IBM AIX, Silicon Graphics IRIX - that indicates all of they are prone to risk. Even the suppose to most protected OS - UBUNTU can be atta cked by virus or ad-wares.

Answer 4

Well, if you have used multiple antiviruses and malware scanners, and none of them have been able to find it, then it is safe to say that the trojan has been removed.

Answer 5

Yes it's gone. Since you scan with all those, it should be. And most definitely is.