I wanted to share my Malware Bytes success story.
Recently I got hit by a pretty nasty piece of malware simply by visiting a website that I had been to 100s of times in the past (ninjavideo.net). I thought I was protected. It shot right through AVG and gave me a message that my PC was infected by spyware, and I needed to download special AV software to fix it. Turns out the same website that has the cure (maybe) also launches the malware in the first place. Just give them a credit card number and they would take care of everything. Not a chance! I could not use MB because I had not heard of it before, so it was not not my PC, and the malware would not let me load it. It got so bad I had to reformat the hard drive.
This weekend I was back at the same site. Guess I didn't learn the first time. I had been going there a few times since the first infection with no problems. This time I got hit again. Blew right through McAfee. Same type of attack, same spelling and grammar-poor messages telling me to download special software to pervent [sic] spyware. It also deleted the main MB executable file, locked out task manager, etc.
I locked down the McAfee firewall to keep the malware from inviting its friends. I tried re-installing MB, but it just deleted the main file again. So, I went to my other computer and made a copy of the MB executable, mbam.exe. I then renamed it and made it read-only. I copied it into the MB program directory. Then I ran the file and it loaded the MB program. It found a lot of problems. It quarantined what it could and I had to reboot to clear the rest. Some parts managed to come back. I unlocked the firewall and updated MB. I wound up running MB and rebooting about 4 times before it came up clean. I then installed Avira and ran that to make sure no trace of the malware remained. So far everything is OK.
Thank you everyone at Malware Bytes for creating a great AV product and for staying on top of new threats. I'm a believer!