The Anti-virus Fairy

This is by far the strangest thing I have ever experienced when come face to face with overwhelming virus threats and conceding to wiping the drive.

Before I begin I feel I must give you a little bit of background on this computer. It was bought prepackaged in a box from Walmart. Bad video card, not a great processor, descent RAM and chugs like a old car on bad gas when asked to do more than one task at a time. On top of it all it came with Window Vista. Yeah, I felt like putting it out of it's misery when it came out of the box. Thankfully it was not mine, just a beginner's computer for someone who had no business owning one.

About a week ago the same computer I just described was hit by a tidal wave of viruses (roughly 40). Trojans, several key loggers, fake anti-viruses, and a virus that was shooting down certain EXE files like task manager and all anti-viruses. It seemed hopeless. I expected even a professional computer programmer would take a look and tell me it's FUBAR. The only thing I felt I could do was unhook it from the internet and go back to my computer and look up how I can hopefully defeat these viruses one by one.

Now here's where things get weird. Get back here, with a written list of potential viruses and ways of treating them and to my surprise the computer is working fine! Needless to say I'm completely blown away. Anti-viruses are working, programs are not getting shut down and Explorer is not being opened by itself. The computer is still unhooked from the internet and I ask everyone who might have used the computer and no one has. I ran a virus scan and its free and clear.

Now here are my two theories. First, Vista is so buggy that it even interrupts the operations of viruses and can cause them to glitch out, giving Ad-Aware or AVG a window to operate with enough time to wipe them out or at least quarantine them.

And my second theory is that the Anti-virus Fairy heard my pleas and cured this computer with her magic wand.

Now obviously one of my theories is more plausible than the other but I'd like to hear from you. Tell me what you think or just write to tell me I just got that lucky.

I've never heard of viruses or trojans leaving a machine on their own. More likely is the hacker replaced them with a rootkit that's hidden from view.