which is the best anti-virus software for w2k?

[o770]

thanks.

[Jon]

Hard to say really. Everyone has their favorite and biases towards one or the other. Personally, I don't even run antivirus except on my fileserver anymore. Anything I download goes directly there so, typically, it is the only one that is exposed to a virus threat.

I use Norton's Corporate Antivirus on it. Not because it's the best or because I like Symantec more than any other, but because I borrowed it from my work and it had many features aside the actual protection that I liked.

McAffee and Symantec are probably the biggest names out there but there are several others that are more than worth using.

InnoculateIT is an excellent FREE (yes, free) antivirus. Fully updateable and upgradeable. Norman Virus Control Center isn't bad (it's based on the McAffee engine but I'm not sure it's being made anymore). I've heard good things about Panda Antivirus and I also have used and liked A-Trend's PC-Cillin.

I would just choose one that has alot of updates available and makes it easy to get them. Most do roughly the same job.

[Vryce]

I too use NAV corporate, and it works well enough for me, I've never tried McAfee or Panda, but they have good reputations...

My only problem with Norton is that their email "protection" can conflict with firewalls, the email protection norton uses is like a proxy, and will reply to connections (even refused ones)... defeating the stealth attributes of a firewall like zone..

[Kingslayer]

PC-Cillin.

They have even worked out the problems with install troubles on dual CPU machines.

I have tried Panda. I oredered it off their site. I downloaded it. Tried to update it, and found that I have to wait 2-3 days before they send me a username and password in order to update the software. This is absolutely unnacceptable. Nimba broke out the day I ordered it. (I was getting it for my file/ftp server). What good is a virus scan if you have to wait 3 days to update it in the middle of one of the worst viruses to hit the streets?

I have tried Norton, but as usual, it's just a resource hog. It couldn't do anyting with Nimda, where PC-Cillin was able to kill it.

I have send emails to PC-Cillin with zipped files that are suspected viruses and usually get a phone call or email within 45 minutes letting me if the file is clean or not. The customer service is par. The resource footprint of the program is minimal. And the effectiveness of the program, in my opinion, is well above most other virus scan software.

We have McAfee at work on our 300 Win2K workstations. I hate it, I wouldn't install it on the devil's computer. Even he doesn't deserved to be punished that bad. Recently McAfee has pushed out a virus .dat file to update itself that hosed the whole program and has to be patched with a Service Pack.