# How Do I Keep Naughty Regestry Keys out?



## NaomiWiflath (Jun 26, 2006)

Hi TSF, Long time no see.

I've found that the only viruses that I seem to get are bad registry keys that cause havoc on my system. Mind you, I don't get them often. But just today, I left my computer to go to school. Came back not 3 hours later to find bad things happening. Somehow something took a screen shot of my desktop, then hid all my icons. [sounds like a stupid prank- but I'm the only one who knows to work a computer that well in my home.] 

After finally figuring out this was the problem, I tried to system restore. This didn't work [and hasn't for over a month. Could some of my protection programs be preventing it?] so I ran MSconfig and started in safe mode. Avast! and AVG free found nothing, but good Ol Spybot found the bad key. It was something that disabled my firewall among other things on my machine. Got rid of that, restarted, removed a BHO and here I am now. It's not like I go to bad websites. Rather, I did my Fafsa and was looking for scholarships last night. 

I've had this happen before- where its only Spybot S & D that is able to find the keys. But How can I prevent bad keys from being made in the first place? Every so often a few get past all my AV's and everything. I actually have it configured so it asks me about any change first. And I haven't had any recently. 

I am running SP2 Windows XP Home Edition
I have AVG Free, Avast! Anti Virus, Spybot Search & Destroy, Ad Aware 2007, Spyware Guard, & Spyware Blaster.


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## dj_kiwi (Apr 20, 2008)

Hi there, I got around this problem with "Comodo Firewall"

It asks you if you would like to allow programs to access / write to the registry.

I hope this could be of some use to you. ray:


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## NaomiWiflath (Jun 26, 2006)

I knew I was forgetting something! That bad registry key I caught managed to turn off comodo! I always have it set on Learning so It always asks me before allowing anything. Otherwise things are auto denied. The regestry managed to change all my Comodo settings so everything was allowed- and could not be changed back until the regestry was removed!


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## johnwill (Sep 26, 2002)

Try Spyware Blaster.


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## dj_kiwi (Apr 20, 2008)

are you running AVG & Avast??


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## NaomiWiflath (Jun 26, 2006)

johnwill said:


> Try Spyware Blaster.


I'm running spyware blaster, AVG and Avast! yes. thats what I don't understand- My computer is pretty loaded security wise.


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## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

AVG and Avast are both antivirus programs. This could be causing conflicts and slowdowns. The general rule is "one firewall, one antivirus, many antispyware". I would remove AVG and keep Avast.


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## NaomiWiflath (Jun 26, 2006)

I've been debating what one to remove. I've tried going without one or the other- and both seem to be able to catch things the other cannot. If that makes any sense.


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## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

If you're getting so many infections that you need 2 AVs, you might want to consider changing your surfing habits and download sources, or at least switch from IE (which uses ActiveX) to the safer Firefox.

Is your security software catching viruses or other forms of malware? Are they from websites or downloads? Do you ever google the detected infections to see whether they are actually harmful or just minor or false positives?

You can keep both AVG and Avast but just use the one that uses the least system resources for realtime scanning, and disable the other one's realtime features and then use it for weekly scans.


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## NaomiWiflath (Jun 26, 2006)

I actually don't get many infections. Rather- I'm always worried about what could possibly be on my machine that I don't know about. I do use firefox, though.


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