Already decided I'll move to a free alternative when my subscription ends but look what just poped up, nothing short of adware IMO.

30 minutes after I booted my new laptop the pre-installed AV-software decided that my software is malware trying to smuggle data out of my system while it was just fetching some data I requested. I concluded that the only malware on my system was the AV-software so I uninstalled it right away.
AV-software is getting out of hand. It's not your computer. You are just allowed to use it when you ask the AV-software.

Vain

Uninstalling mcafee doesn't actually uninstall it. Most of the processes keep running after it claims to be uninstalled. End the processes in task manager then delete the mcafee folder in program files.

Avast rocks (www.avast.com) & it has a free home edition. The only messages I've ever got are "Virus database has been updated" and "Avast has installed an update and needs to restart your machine".

On top of that it is cross platform, and I've not had any false positives or stuff sneak past yet.

Quote from Anarchi-H :

Avast rocks (www.avast.com) & it has a free home edition. The only messages I've ever got are "Virus database has been updated" and "Avast has installed an update and needs to restart your machine".

On top of that it is cross platform, and I've not had any false positives or stuff sneak past yet.

Best one I tried yet.

Quote from Anarchi-H :

Avast rocks (www.avast.com) & it has a free home edition. The only messages I've ever got are "Virus database has been updated" and "Avast has installed an update and needs to restart your machine".

On top of that it is cross platform, and I've not had any false positives or stuff sneak past yet.

I really don't want any piece of software installing any patches by them selves. Updating the firewall an virusguard doesn't take that much time if I do it myself. And windows updates just tells me when they are ready for downloading.

So I am in total control and my programs really are afraid of me :bullwhip:

Quote from Hyperactive :

I really don't want any piece of software installing any patches by them selves. Updating the firewall an virusguard doesn't take that much time if I do it myself. And windows updates just tells me when they are ready for downloading.

Fair enough; IIRC Avast has a notify option that will just tell you that an update is available, or you can just switch it off altogether.

Thanks for the link

Just downloaded avast seems a lot quicker and I like the option to pause a scan and the option to block popups when full screen applications are in use.

Quote from Hyperactive :

I really don't want any piece of software installing any patches by them selves. Updating the firewall an virusguard doesn't take that much time if I do it myself. And windows updates just tells me when they are ready for downloading.

You can set it to manual updates

I cant comment on software firewalls, as im using my router/modem/firewall for those purposes.

but as for anti-virus, i have always used and will continue to use AVG anti-virus. it tells you when updates are available by changing its icon to greyscale in the system tray. its an install and forget piece of software really. i recommend it anyway, and its free.

try http://www.grisoft.com/doc/1 and make sure you get the AVG free edition.

Do yourself a favour and get the best Av program around, not only has it always performed 100% in every test its ever done, it is extremely light on resources and very, very fast for scanning.

NOD32.

And whatever you do, don't use free AV programs, you might aswell not bother having one, anyone who has one of these, I would SERIOUSLY recommend doing an online scan with one of the "biggies", you may be shocked.

Dan,

I can't see why Avast won't do the job I can tell you now it's lighter than McAfee because the computer is already faster and looking at Ctrl + Alt + Del it's not taking 20mb of memory

As for detection it is basically a free version of a comercial product and will surely have a large virus database.

McAfee hasn't actually picked up anything but false alarms for several months, when I last restored my PC after running a program that McAfee told me was clean. Bottom line is common sense is the best defense.

Quote from danowat :

And whatever you do, don't use free AV programs, you might aswell not bother having one, anyone who has one of these, I would SERIOUSLY recommend doing an online scan with one of the "biggies", you may be shocked.

All I can say is if you've included Avast in that, you are misinformed at best.

Try AVG its free or windows onecare its anti spy ect but its beta it good tho and its got a tun up so you can clean your pc and its got a firewall so try them out.

lol

Avast rules btw, I've used it for a long time and never needed to switch. Only thing is its transparent web proxy doesn't like ZoneAlarm.

I'm using AntiVir PersonalEdition. It's free for personal use and works really well:
http://www.free-av.com/

Quote from faster111 :

Try AVG its free or windows onecare its anti spy ect but its beta it good tho and its got a tun up so you can clean your pc and its got a firewall so try them out.

tune ups a different program, onecare is free until the Beta period ends, and only one version of AVG is free, although the AVG + Firewall is easily the best anti-virus i have ever used!

Imo, the best anti-virus software is common sense (and a good firewall). Last time I had anti-virus software installed was back in '98 or sometime around then. The reason I uninstalled it already back then was the reason that it was useless and only thing it did was hog resources. Doesn't require that much sense not to download and run every single exe or bat file that you come across. Yes, there are security holes in browsers but as long as you stay clear from IE, you oughta be fine.

Opera + Stinger (I run it like every 6 months and nothing comes up) + Firewall has kept me virus free for the last years.

Quote from danowat :

Do yourself a favour and get the best Av program around, not only has it always performed 100% in every test its ever done, it is extremely light on resources and very, very fast for scanning.

NOD32.

And whatever you do, don't use free AV programs, you might aswell not bother having one, anyone who has one of these, I would SERIOUSLY recommend doing an online scan with one of the "biggies", you may be shocked.

Dan,

I changed from McAfee and guess what: Found virus that McAfee did not find. Been running Avast for 1.5 years and no virus.

Quote from ajp71 :

...
You can set it to manual updates

Heh, I was just commenting more that I would never allow any program to patch itself without asking her lord (me) what to do

I need to learn to write sentences with some sense in them. But antivir rockt, like GP4Flo said

And if you plan to visit any adult entertainment web pages, you certainly (would ) need some antivirus software... (somebody had to say it)

I find it actually quite unbelievable that how people with firewalls&antivirus software&spyware detection progs&etc. are able to collect all kinds of viruses&spyware on their computers. It is quite unbelievable that people respond to messages like "nude pr0n, check this URL" or open some defenately suspicious files sent by unknown person... illepall

I'm using Avast too. It's great but the visual user interface is kinda horrible but skins make it a bit more simplier.

Avast is nice. Its 64bit support is also nice. It did certainly have a marked down effect on my PC when it was "disabled" though.

My 2 peneth worth is Panda AV. Its certainly not free, and I can only vouch for the enterprise editions (both central management and roaming) which are certainly good (just dont use the exchange plugin).

Till today I was using the AntiVir PersonalEdition but the latest upgrade to version 7 made it very fishy. All configuration options for the automatic updates are basically gone, it tries to update itself whenever it wants (thank you, dear popup window, I really wanted to know that while playing LFS), it reports that it might be out of date EVERY fricken day (even though I set it to report every 7 days) and reaching an update-server is pure luck since the version upgrade.

In my point of view it starts to go down the road of all the other "big" AV companies like McAfee or Norton which I really don't like. I have to admit, it once indirectly saved me from a virus attack (which came over from the network share of a, lets say a bit careless friend), but it wouldn't have saved anyone with "standard" computer knowledge because it didn't actually do anything against the process that spread the virus, it just started reporting more and more infected files. I had to kill the process, and thank god I was fast enough so it only got 10 files. It completely trashed the system of my friend though :rolleyes:


Whatever, goodbye free AV, welcome Avast.

All I can base my recommendations on are personal experiance, I have personally tested many different AV progs and in my opinion NOD32 is the best.

Norton and Mcaffe are notorious system hogs and can be VERY difficult to remove, all of the free ones, while having a nice small footprint miss various infections, Panda is very good, but I believe NOD32 to be the best.

Also NOD32 is the ONLY AV prog that has never missed an "in the wild" virus since 1998, and has awards and recommendations out the ying yang > http://www.nod32.com/news/VB100Award34.pdf

Use what you like, I couldnt careless, but one thing to remember is, how do you know you dont have a virus if your AV program hasnt picked it up?.

Dan,

Quote :

how do you know you dont have a virus if your AV program hasnt picked it up?

Common sense.
Virus- and AV-software-less since 1997.

Vain

Quote from AndroidXP :

Till today I was using the AntiVir PersonalEdition but the latest upgrade to version 7 made it very fishy. All configuration options for the automatic updates are basically gone, it tries to update itself whenever it wants (thank you, dear popup window, I really wanted to know that while playing LFS), it reports that it might be out of date EVERY fricken day (even though I set it to report every 7 days) and reaching an update-server is pure luck since the version upgrade.

In my point of view it starts to go down the road of all the other "big" AV companies like McAfee or Norton which I really don't like. I have to admit, it once indirectly saved me from a virus attack (which came over from the network share of a, lets say a bit careless friend), but it wouldn't have saved anyone with "standard" computer knowledge because it didn't actually do anything against the process that spread the virus, it just started reporting more and more infected files. I had to kill the process, and thank god I was fast enough so it only got 10 files. It completely trashed the system of my friend though :rolleyes:


Whatever, goodbye free AV, welcome Avast.

I had the same problem and probably it is just because they haven't finished the program yet. Disabling those automativ thingies is quite easy, finding where to do it is hard. Just doublecklicking the icon in taskbar, switch to "scheduler" tab and unmark the "daily update" checkbox. Also check the other options and no problems should arise