Anti-Virus Software??

I've had it with Norton...any suggestions on good anti-virus/firewall security software? Anyone tried Panda or PC Chillin? Any advice appreciated.

Regards,
Flavio

Do a search and you'll find we discussed this issue a couple of times in the past few months including a topic started by myself. I can say for myself, I dumped Norton and went with NOD32. I didn't really have any issues with Norton, it just did it's job too slowly.

About 2 weeks ago, I finally had it with Symantec - too slow and was killing my system. I was recommeded AVG, its free, fast as lighting, and low overhead. During its first scan, it picked up a few things Symantec completely missed (very, very old viruses from my college days)

Direct link to the site

http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5

Another vote for NOD32. Light on system resources and updates itself at least daily.

The top three antivirus products, listed in no particular order, are:

NOD32
BitDefender 9
Kaspersky

I actually have all three of them and can recommend all of them over Norton, PCCillin, McAfee, Panda and any of the other highly marketed antivirus programs available at your local retail chain. My favorite of them all is NOD32. It is light on resources, scans way faster than the competition, has advanced heuristic detection to detect new viruses and is started at the kernel level.(starting at the kernel level almost ensures a virus will not be able disable your antivirus protection.) The only criticism I have is that the user interface is not as friendly as the others.

Please be assured that all three are top notch and will give you excellent protection against viruses.

IMO...

eTrust Anti-Virus by Computer Associates has been working great for me and my clients for the past 5 years. Its what Microsoft runs on all their servers at Corporate in Redmond too.

Its a great product because unlike something like the Symantec product which is a memory hog and generally slows the computer down the eTrust product only has 2 services running and has a small footprint. Also the GUI isn't filled with bloatware.

Runs like a champ. I think its geared more towards the corporate environment but for my money its the best.

They also make a less expensive product called eTrust EZ-Antivirus but i wouldn't mess with it.

Michael

AVG and Avast are both good. Kaspersky is very good but more $.

Antivirus recommendation:
Trend Micro PC Cillin
The most popular antivirus(Norton) does not make it the best (very far from it actually). PC-Cillin is the antivirus I (along with almost all of my tech friends and associates) use on their own PC's. That should tell you something!

There are other good antivirus products as well. For example I use Avast as a decent free antivirus.

Thanks all...that should give me a starting point.

Regards,
Flavio

I got fed up with both Mcaffee and Symmantic. Too expensive, resource hogs, etc.

I've been running the AVG freeware for about 2 years now. All I can say is: no problems of any kind. No viruses, either. When I loaded it, it found a few viruses lurking on my HD (likely quarantined, but AVG was able to remove them, something the high $$$ Symmantic wasn't able to do.)

At work, we run Symmantic, and all I can say is: it makes AVG look even *better*, when I have a similar computer at home running AVG.

My 2¢

Hammer said:

NOD32
BitDefender 9
Kaspersky

Click to expand...

This are the best. My favovite is Kaspersky.
Only bitdefender includes firewall, but for firewall i prefer a stand alone program (kerio).

I use kerio as my firewall and kaspersky as AV.

I was getting a daily pop-up that the Norton Internet Security wasz going to expire on my new box. I ain't that happy with Norton and have had issues in the past, as have too many of my friends! Based on this thread, I did some research, and decided on NOD32. I bought and downloaded it today. During instillation, a red warning appeared to uninstall any other AV software, or else! I cancelled instillation in order to uninstall Norton.

Norton died very hard!!!!! 3-components I could find were Internet protection, Security center, and Symantec update. Uninstall actually locked this thing up.-(couldn' reboot!) The new Crashpac doesn't have a reset button, and I had to physically "pull the plug!"

I pulled the power cable to the modum, and sucessfully installed NOD32. Uncle Norton seems to be history, and I did a full sys scan. NOD32 didn't like the "Coke joke" thing (clk on free drink holder and your optical drive's tray opens) I've had since Y2K. It found abt 10 copies. I waved byby to them. That was all. I checked for updates, and the one I installed was current including def's.

I'm running current XP, ZoneAlarm Pro, AdAware SE (paid type) and Spybot S&D. Anybody else wonder if the Virus/Spyware folks have side jobs creating the crapware! :thinking:

Larry

In this context, pleasing success found using the free (open source) ClamAV for Windows. http://www.clamwin.com/

Also successful in various deployments were Spybot Search & Destroy (free) and Zone Alarm.

I highly recommend that everyone run a strong spyware program IN ADDITION to their Anti-Virus program of choice. I personally use Spy Sweeper on all machines in my extended family. Prior to installing Spy Sweeper, we had to periodically rebuild my mother's machine, even though she doesn't use Outlook (Hotmail only) and doesn't install her own software. She became infested with so much spyware just through the web that it completely destroyed her machine. She hasn't had one problem since we installed Spy Sweeper. I highly recommend it.

Tdgh566, I run amongst other security software, Spy Sweeper as well. One problem I find with it is that when opening up IE, a component of spysweeper, called "WRSSDK.exe" uses cpu 100 percent for a good ten seconds and during that time will not let IE open. I looked at the Spysweeper options and there are a lot of IE shields enabled but I still wonder why it should take so long. This isn't a big issue as I genererally use Firefox.

Have you noticed the same thing by any chance?

tdhg566 said:

I highly recommend that everyone run a strong spyware program IN ADDITION to their Anti-Virus program of choice. I personally use Spy Sweeper on all machines in my extended family. Prior to installing Spy Sweeper, we had to periodically rebuild my mother's machine, even though she doesn't use Outlook (Hotmail only) and doesn't install her own software. She became infested with so much spyware just through the web that it completely destroyed her machine. She hasn't had one problem since we installed Spy Sweeper. I highly recommend it.

Click to expand...

I've been very happy with Avast here.

AVG here, plus Ad-Aware and Spybot to remove the nasties. All of these are free and well-regarded. Recently added B-Safe (porn blocker, $60/y) to keep the little Powernoodles from growing up too fast.


yo

My setup and recommendations exactly!!

powernoodle said:

AVG here, plus Ad-Aware and Spybot to remove the nasties. All of these are free and well-regarded.

Click to expand...

I also have AVG running on several machines. Been quite pleased with it.