Here at Modulus I like to keep things safe and secure. And Antivirus plays an important part on that. So when the new Windows 8 came out end of last year, I busted out the Microsoft Partnership benefits and downloaded the in place upgrade. At this point I will suggest not to do this, but upgrading means less downtime, and to be honest the Microsoft upgrade process from Windows 7 Ultimate was pretty seamless and have not had the troubles others have had. So, back on topic!
Windows 8 comes with Windows Defender and Anti-malware at the core, and it runs in the background and stays out the way which is fantastic! But I am old school and need to see it, touch it, feel it! So, I installed a popular antivirus and ran with it as we have always done over the years. This worked a charm as usual, you could see it, touch it, feel it, scan with it, schedule scans and it was never a problem. I will point out, I have never had a virus at this point.
Then, like a rattle int he car, along comes the less abrasive blue screen of death (BSOD). But his was no ordinary BSOD, it would happen in a particular program (Visual Studio 2012) when editing a particular file in either CSS or LESS format. Once the computer would do it’s thing and reassure that it is sending your crash dump to the mother-ship, you end up back where you left off… almost! If it wasn’t for corrupting said file, all would be fine, but it did corrupt said file and that is not fine. With all the source control providers enabled, nothing prepares you for a file corruption between commits of the file to the source control provider. So my beautifully handcrafted CSS/LESS file becomes nothing more than square blocks or blank space in a range of editors as I try feverishly to recover it. Now to the point!
After digging round, there are two main culprits… a bad hard drive port driver or assignment, or possible antivirus corruption. So, the easiest thing was to uninstall antivirus right? Yeah, I have Windows 8 with antivirus built in. So off with the third party antivirus and on the with the built in option by Microsoft. Within 24 hours, BAM! Malware. Let me remind you, I have NEVER had a virus or Malware/Spyware in my life (other than intentionally installing a known virus to test something and help out a friend back in the early 2000’s). So just now have stopped the built in Defender service and back to an upgraded version of the good old third party antivirus that has always kept me safe.
So what did I do to get said malware in the first place? Well, hard to say, I installed Daemon Tools lite to mount an installer ISO from the MSDN downloads and as usual did not proceed with all the added extras and toolbars. SO can only assume it came from there.
The intention here is to not to point finger as any mentioned software in this post is fantastic software, just unfortunate circumstances on my behalf that some of you will likely never experience. But with Windows 8.1 on it’s way soon, you might get tempted, and I recommend it, but if you are running third party antivirus, do yourself a favour, get the latest version compatible with Windows 8 and keep running it. You will need to disable the built in Defender so Google “How to disable Windows 8 Defender” and follow some instructions.