Well, despite its significant shortcomings, vista does seem more secure than XP.

After over 1 year since its release, I had my first infected Vista system.

And in the process I found out a few interesting things about Vista.

The system had avast, and it had found a few problems, but didn’t seem able to fix the problem.

The avast log shows problems with files in (amongst other places) c:user{username}Appdatalocaletcetc.

But oddly, windows explorer won’t display the appdata folder.

In its own idiosyncratic way, vista actually lets you view the contents, but only if you actually type (or complete) the name in the “address bar” at the top of windows explorer… how odd!

Anyway, I find I just need to start in safe mode, remove the guilty files, fix the startup areas in the registry, and then defender took care of the rest.

I also reset the firewall settings to its default settings (as it seemed to be allowing most things). I also installed SP1 (without a hitch 🙂 ).