In reply to a post by Pipexer:

In the first instance use the vipre rescue scanner

http://live.vipreantivirus.com/

This will do a scan in safe mode for any viruses. The downside is it takes a while.

Unless you have downloaded something else that you suspect is a virus I'd have thought it unlikely your machines have become suddenly compromised.

I know, but want to be sure. Both machines are coming up with McAfee stopped a process trying to cause a Buffer Overload ... which suggests a Trojan, but as the two are used for totally different purposes it would be very co-incidental.

One not booting into the User correctly - and that was the user account where the McAfee update was installed and te second accepting the password and then dropping back to the select user screen. - again where McAfee was installed. Either McAfee installed something odd or it has caused a problem - is my feeling.

If you can gain access to a machine for long enough to download and burn a small ISO, then grab the Kaspersky Rescue CD. You can then boot from the CD, update it's definitions, scan and if necessary, clean the system without ever having to start up in the normal manner.

If you're thinking of transferring MBAM to the afflicted machine, don't forget to grab the latest defs whilst there.
Install MBAM, the defs and run it entirely from within Safe Mode.

As for free AV, it's hardly worth searching about for given some of the ridiculously low prices you see on Amazon etc for full commercial security. However, if you insist on free, give Comodo a go.

For the last year and a half I have been using MSE, but recently read one too many reports of bad performance and have reverted to Kaspersky Internet Security. At a price of £12.99 for 3 PCs for 1 year from Amazon (£4.33 per PC per year), price should not be an issue in selecting your security s/w.

JPL

Cost is not really an issue. The reason that I want a free one is that I then do not have to input any personal details - name, address, credit card &c. Until the problems are resolved, I want to take as few chances as possible.

In reply to a post by JPL:

For the last year and a half I have been using MSE, but recently read one too many reports of bad performance and have reverted to Kaspersky Internet Security. At a price of £12.99 for 3 PCs for 1 year from Amazon (£4.33 per PC per year), price should not be an issue in selecting your security s/w.

JPL

Were the reports independent.
Have had no problems with MSE. In fact it found a couple of Trojans that Comodo missed, I have dumped the comodo as I had major sandbagging problems with execution files.
Also many of the commercial products are memory hogs and slow system.

I certainly wouldn't trust MSE as I have seen several compromised machines that were supposedly protected by it. Only today, a friend of a friend brought a laptop to me with MSE for "protection". I would say that iramer and Chifrax have been present for some time but the Pihar.b rootkit along with The Met Police ransomware is what it made fall over yesterday.
The history of the laptop seems to be fairly "normal" - No pirated software, no evidence of porn or other rogue sites, no malicious mails etc etc. I'm pretty certain that an automatically downloaded codec was the original source of the infections.

As for Comodo, you should read the manual.

ComboFix should only be used under instruction from someone who knows exactly how to interpret it's reports.

In reply to a post by Deadbeat:

I certainly wouldn't trust MSE as I have seen several compromised machines that were supposedly protected by it. Only today, a friend of a friend brought a laptop to me with MSE for "protection". I would say that iramer and Chifrax have been present for some time but the Pihar.b rootkit along with The Met Police ransomware is what it made fall over yesterday.
The history of the laptop seems to be fairly "normal" - No pirated software, no evidence of porn or other rogue sites, no malicious mails etc etc. I'm pretty certain that an automatically downloaded codec was the original source of the infections.

As for Comodo, you should read the manual.

No Security is 100%
Norton did not dectect Pihar.b
AVG did not detect ransomeware.
ETC.
I have mse and Winpatrol Plus installed on 6 machines. I have not had a known problem with any machine. I can only speak as I find

As for comodo. I have read the manual. It was causing more problems than it was fixing, No Security software should be hard to understand and implement. Jnstall and forget should be the norm,

AVG and to some extent, Norton aren't good benchmarks and just because another AV system fails to detect problems that makes it all OK???

I've installed Comodo on probably upwards of a hundred machines and except for a few FP's, never really seen a problem on a machine that's had "normal" use.. I'm not saying it's perfect, but for free protection, it's pretty good. I usually place HJT along with a good initial log for the EU's comparison and install MBAM with instructions for them to be used regularly. The OS and installed programs etc are also carefully configured in order to avoid known problems, exploits etc.

Under a fiver a year for malware protection and, especially as ads are becoming a regular means of malware delivery, ad blocking. It's a steal!