Antivirus of Choice?

That isn't a revolutionary idea germanjulian, however, Antivirus is a good thing to use.

Why?

Because there are plenty of people out there who think they know what is good for their computer, and think they know how to secure it, when in fact they do not.

Antivirus, at the very least, is good idiot proofing.

I didnt say its a bad thing. I think its a waste of money if you get the ones you pay for (which are not very good anyway) and if you know your processes in your task manager and have control of your startup programs in the registry. If somethings weird I check my registry startup folders if there is anything there should not be and windows services.

Viruses are primitive things. They need to start as a process in windows and are therefore easy to spot. And I am confident that 70% of our 3 star and higher members have enough IT knowlege of windows to be virus free... unlike people at work... even though we tell them not to click on the pif files, exe files and attachments from people they dont know they still do it... amazes me every time

I used to use Norton, until one of my instructors at school showed me AVG. I tried it out, and it found 4 instances of viiri (is that it?) on my machine that norton had missed. This was the first reason for the switch. The second, was that it was less of a resource hog, which was good because at the same time, I was looking for an AV package for my servers. Third, the software had more frequent updates than NAV, which appears to me as one every day or every other day, where NAV updates once every three or so days.

germanjulian said:

simple. works flawlessly. takes no system resources. No virus since 2 years.

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*That you know of.

Although I agree with you that being smart, not using IE, Outlook, and using a firewall will cut your chances of getting a virus down to very little, you still have a chance of getting one, even ones that you cannot see. There are more and more viruses, worms and trojans out there that are targetting exploits in non-microsoft programs. Namely mozilla-based browsers, which make up the majority of non-MS browsers, and numerous email clients.

If you have a router, you are not safe from friends who come over and plug in, if they are infected with something network-transferrable, then you will get it if there's not a windowsupdate for it, or if it propogates through shares, you have a good chance, unless you have disabled windows file sharing.

Knowing what's running in task manager is nice, but processes can now hide from there. If a virus infects a file like explorer.exe, when that file executes it should run like normal, seen as a legitimate file, but still can exhibit virus/worm/trojan properties.

To everyone who is not running a virus scanner: Yes, you are living on the edge.. woo, but even knowledgeable people can catch viruses, in which case you are only part of the problem. Even knowledgeable people with virus scanners still get viruses. It's especially the case if you have a lot of computers or laptops moving in & out of your network.

I have AVG on all machines at home. When I worked helpdesk for Polaroid, Norton was pure evil to me. Many problems related to system resources. I have McAfee at my job now and it seems fine enough. I've used Panda and one other free one but don't recall what it was.

AVG has found virus that the other free one let past. I can update the DAT file daily and without user intervention. Lets not forget that it was free. I find that it takes very little in system resources and I REALLY like that.

I use Stinger when I need a nice quick scan, and AVG free edition. Norton and Mcafee is just horrible when you add their "personal firewall" and all that crap. Then things begin not to work how they should.

Amazes me also... Similar experiences here.

I have run into virii that are not as easy to track down and eliminate... I've run into nasties which break system management utilities and close them out seconds after starting. Getting them working again in order to find out what is the culprit is a chore in itself. Again though, the fault of poor security management which renders active virus protection useless anyways.

germanjulian said:

My tool of choice:

MY BRAIN

simple. works flawlessly. takes no system resources. No virus since 2 years.

what a waste. Otherwise for people with no brain I would recommend AVG.

and no you do not need a anti-virus program. I dont know any virus which is out which manages to install itself on the computer without user intervention if you have all windows updates + firewall. Do not give me any "YEAH BUT"... I run my computer 24/7 nearly and its always on the net. The last virus I had I installed myself and removed myself. Oh and dont use IE and Outlook.

and yeah I backup my work too every now and again... but there has been 1 virus this year which was big and acctually was destructive and it only affected people with firewalls from some big security company (hardware)

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This works for me pretty well too. I think it's pretty obvious when a message has a virus as an attachment and I just don't open it. The moment I got anti-virus software was when a friend borrowed my connection to check out awnsers to some dating thing, and was just clicking open a virus when I noticed and came inbetween. I (almost) trust my wife not to do anything silly, but don't feel like standing next by everytime a mate who is not computer literate wants to read his mail.

Boomstick said:

I use AVG. I've tried the rest.
I agree with Sucka. A virus needs to be just one step ahead of AV software, for me to put much faith in them.

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Ditto. I use AVG and so does my Highschool and College. That sez alot.

I use Norton 2004 simply because its like $2.95 a month with my Earthlink service.
I never felt like shelling out $50 for the program at once.

I.M.O.G. said:

I have thought mcafee sucked for quite some time, but am suprised to see how drastically most people so far have agreed with that.

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I'd say go read their tech message board but they delete and ban people who are upset at mcafee. Nice to se how many people are posting teh same problems and you get this nice "escalation letter" which you have to literally give them way to much info. The problems are pretty obvious when ALOT of peopel have the same ones. Seem that Mcafee released a beta version out to the public without telling them.

Now that this thread exists I vote that this current one be closed :

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=323824


EDIT : Actually this thread should still stand as the other thread is a breakdown list of the 'other' category in this poll .

AVG was crap for me.

I always got a wierd windows virus error, and i nevet detected anything.

NOD32 here. Very fast, effective and low resource Antivirius.

I highly recommend it

Used Norton once- well twice, and after the 3 month "trial" period it had stopped working and failed to notify me. When I purchased the full version and installed it, the full version began to cause serious errors with network connections. Then Tried McAfee. Which was fine for 4 more months, then connection errors began to crop up with each reboot.
I then Found the Free AVG from Grisoft.com a couple of years ago, and have not had any problems since. This software has even found viruses on another rig I have that was still running Norton!

Ya know,I just switched to the AVG free edition also.Norton was hogging alot of resources and it was not free.

I just installed and used Computer Associates Etrust AV just a couple of hours ago to clean a worm I got, cause I forgot to turn my firewall back on, and got the stinking worm from MSN messenger, thing has so many holes in it they will never keep up..

Norton Corporate Edition

got this thing called AVAST updates often and well is FREE!!!!!!!!!! norten is the best though imo

I like Norton, but The software slows down my computer. I had Norton internet security on my wifes notebook PC and it slowed it down to a crawl. I found Free-AV and I love it. The software does not slow down my computer nor does it have any problems.