[Solved] Anti-Virus and Internet security

[TiNRiB]

I bought myself a new laptop today and it came with a pre-installed copy of Norton Internet Security.

My issue is that I've been using AVG for as long as I remember and its been great for me. Very user friendly, easy to update and much cheaper for the licence. However I know that Norton has a reputation of being an excellent form of security and protection but tends to be a bit of a resource hog. Would it be a good idea to just disable my Norton and install AVG on my laptop as well?

Also, what are you using and why?

[Wesley]

I bought myself a new laptop today and it came with a pre-installed copy of Norton Internet Security.

My issue is that I've been using AVG for as long as I remember and its been great for me. Very user friendly, easy to update and much cheaper for the licence. However I know that Norton has a reputation of being an excellent form of security and protection but tends to be a bit of a resource hog. Would it be a good idea to just disable my Norton and install AVG on my laptop as well?

Also, what are you using and why?

I don't really like Norton from a personal point of view, because I've always found that Kaspersky and AVG are much easier to manage and use. Eset's NOD32 is also good, but rather cumbersome in some places, and it feels like its been mashed together by a committee - not a good design structure at all. Mcaffee is just ****ing irritating, full stop.

But Norton is good, as far as Anti-virus packages go, but its not the best. The last time I used Norton was to check for the Conficker virus on a hard drive. AVG picked it up when Norton wouldn't, so that was the nail in the coffin for me.

Check if your bundle isn't a trial edition (like, 60 days or something). If it is, rather uninstall it now and stick to AVG 8.5. I'm using 8.5 now, and very happy with it on my lappie, although it would be nice if it had more memory :-"

[TiNRiB]

Its a 51 day trial, I'm an idiot not to have picked that up... Bye bye Norton.

That is unless anyone has any reason to say some good stuff about it.

[cr@zydude]

Its a 51 day trial, I'm an idiot not to have picked that up... Bye bye Norton.

That is unless anyone has any reason to say some good stuff about it.

remove norton first (good luck with that), I had huge problems when i ran 2 anti viruses.

[Kensei]

I use Avast! and only realized how much more friendly it was when I had to help my flatmate with her laptop that had McCafee Internet Security installed (Holy CRAP, does that program devour CPU time! Literally, as soon as I changed it from that to Avast the laptop ran at least twice as fast!)

As a precaution, I also have a copy of Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware to be doubly sure i am safe ;)

[Banlam]

I use AVGFree in combination with Zone Alarm Fire Wall. Never had any problems.

University forces Mcaffee on all the computers, but find that my AVG picks up viruses which it apparently misses. Especially ones focused towards flash drives.

[TiNRiB]

remove norton first (good luck with that), I had huge problems when i ran 2 anti viruses.

yes running 2 AV's is an issue, but removing 1 is not... Theres this cool new thing called goo00o0gle. ;)

Thanks for the info guys, oh and paying for AVG is so worth it, believe me...

[Wesley]

yes running 2 AV's is an issue, but removing 1 is not... Theres this cool new thing called goo00o0gle. ;)

Thanks for the info guys, oh and paying for AVG is so worth it, believe me...

Why pay for it? AVG Free is all anyone ever really needs, its actually better than most other systems that people have to pay for.

[Shad0wstr1k3]

I use BitDefender, I think it's brillient! It also has this great button that says GAME MODE...

[Chuluka]

Bit Defender has served me well. Saved my PC from some nasty ****.

[zom813]

I used to use AVG Free 8.5, but I recently moved to Avast! 4.8 Professional.

I have read through some on-line articles on this subject, and found that Avast! 4.8 and Avira Antivir seem to have the highest detection rates among the main free antivirus programs. AVG comes close, but there is a noticable difference. Most of my friends use Avast! aswell and they've been nagging me to get it.

That's basically why I moved to Avast! 4.8 Professional.

[Gammaray]

Panda Cloud Antivirus (http://www.cloudantivirus.com/) is free and is less resource centric than others.

[Wanbalans]

im using bitdefender Internet Security , License is cheap. think I payed R300 for 3 user licence.

The game mode is excelent and if you got a laptop it also got a special laptop mode, i havn't figured out what laptop mode does yet but think its something to do when runing on batteries

[Wesley]

Panda Cloud Antivirus (http://www.cloudantivirus.com/) is free and is less resource centric than others.

The splash promotion page indicates that it uses Panda's scanning servers to check your hard drive for viruses, meaning for those with gigabytes of data and a small data cap, this might eat through bandwidth faster than you'd expect. Also, I would expect that scanning your drive locally rather than over the net would result in fewer CPU cycles taken up by the scanning process.

[Gammaray]

The splash promotion page indicates that it uses Panda's scanning servers to check your hard drive for viruses, meaning for those with gigabytes of data and a small data cap, this might eat through bandwidth faster than you'd expect. Also, I would expect that scanning your drive locally rather than over the net would result in fewer CPU cycles taken up by the scanning process.

That all may be true, i haven't tested it really. So one can decide if one wants to sacrifice either local resources or bandwidth (amount pending). I'll do a scan today or tomorrow and check how much it is. (Trend's HouseCall doesn't take much just to do a scan browser based, so cloud computing shouldn't be too much maybe).

[maxdamage]

I find avast doesn't require much to download\update as I found out with avira as that prog required tons of files to download each time when I updated it however it used virtually nothing of my pc's resources which to me was awesome!I however get false positives from both programs but a number of files were deleted before I could back them up and I cannot find them on the net any more. :(

[Cloud_Ratha]

I just installed Kaspersky that came with my mobo. Im running windows 7. I installed it with the vista SP2 compatability. Now it has issues with the antivrus driver. Windows 7 just disables the driver rendering Kaspersky useless :(

Any help?

EDIT: I should learn to check first before posting :P

http://www.kaspersky.com/windows7

[Wesley]

I just installed Kaspersky that came with my mobo. Im running windows 7. I installed it with the vista SP2 compatability. Now it has issues with the antivrus driver. Windows 7 just disables the driver rendering Kaspersky useless :(

Any help?

EDIT: I should learn to check first before posting :P

http://www.kaspersky.com/windows7

I would actually use AVG 8.5 with Windows 7, it runs very well and without any hassles. Is that a free version of Kaspersky, or is it the dreaded trial edition?

[Predator]

I use Avast and have been for ages. AVG Free Has always given me problems.
And recently I started using Zone alarms Firewall for extra protection

http://www.zonealarm.com/security/en-us/zonealarm-pc-security-free-firewall.htm

Now on the topic of Norton...

If you look at internet security/ Norton 360. They are extremely overprotective and demanding on resources.
How ever if you choose just the basic Norton Anti virus things start to get a whole lot better. It is not overprotective and is not to bad on system resources.

But for your situation I would recommend Avast!

http://www.avast.co/eng/avast_4_home.html (http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html)

[Cloud_Ratha]

I would actually use AVG 8.5 with Windows 7, it runs very well and without any hassles. Is that a free version of Kaspersky, or is it the dreaded trial edition?

It is a beta, so i think that it has a free subscription. That or it registered my free account that came from my mobo. Im not too sure. I just need something to run with till Win 7 is officially released.

[Necrolis]

I'm a big fan of COMODO internet security(free version), its excellent(though annoying sometimes, but thats easy to correct), and it picks up ALOT of thing that others don't, any it has some other useful features as well, which eating all your CPU power, now comebine that with sandboxie, noscript & an good hosts file and your set :D(and ofc all of this is free, plus sandboxie has some other uses being a VM and all)

[pArkEr]

I've been using Avast for the last few months. Now my other PC crashed, and my gaming PC was moved from my room the study to be used as a family PC. It was hooked up to the internet, lo and behold a week later viruses started spewing out of nowhere (I blame my brothers).

Avast has been doing well, alerting me whenever it finds something (which is every three minutes), but it always recommends "Move to chest", it doesn't seem to be able to cure anything. So I'm going to install AVG Free as a precaution.

[Necro101]

Never used an Anti-virus nor an firewall for that matter, just plain old windows firewall coupled with an decently configured router has kept me safe from harm.

[Wesley]

Never used an Anti-virus nor an firewall for that matter, just plain old windows firewall coupled with an decently configured router has kept me safe from harm.

So what if I give you a picture called "jailbait.jpg" that installed spyware onto your desktop and a virus into your registry? Would you be safe then?

What about Conficker that uses your computer as a portal to others through the internet and wraps your computer around its digital finger, and then participates in a D.D.O.S attack on the World Trade Center in Hong Kong to bring down the market for a few days? It usually travels to other uninfected computers using the Autoplay feature, and mostly resides on flash drives.

What about a port scanning attack on your router to find out which ports you have open idly, and that allow entry into the computer using the application that opened the port?

[Mic]

I'm wondering... my current anti virus is Avast 4.8 home. Is it a good anti-virus in that it does manage to get rid of viruses? My friend did a scan with bit-defender (which he found extremely irritating) and found over 500 viruses, I also did a scan on my PC (a 12 hour thorough scan0 and found 0... now is it that Avast is so good that it detects and deletes viruses before they infect my PC or isn't it finding them. Also I did try out AVG free edition and it was great, just started bugging me when I had to re register.

[Tigman_1]

Sorry to raise this thread again, but I have Spybot, Nod32 and Malwarebytes. Basically what I have found is that Malwarebytes never finds any viruses.

I just wanted to know if this is a bad thing, and are there any other good anti-virus programs that I can use to replace MalwareBytes

- EDIT: one thing I know is that everytime I use my flash drive in other computers and then return to mine, it has a virus and infects my pc. I just wanted to know if there is a program that pre-scans drives before they are activated?

[Necrolis]

Best way to stop usb viruses is to make a read only autorun file that is blank(or starts something cool like portable apps) and/or disable the autorun file mapping in the registery. A useful trick i use to avoid the viruses at UJ is to create a read only file with on extension(ie just rename a blank .txt) with the name of the folder the viruses attempt to copy on(in my case recycle and recycler), due to widows folder rules this stops the virus from copying its folder to your usb. Quite a few of the anti viruses prescan usbs, but sometimes it can be too late as the autorun has already been triggered(this is where COMODOs defence+ really helps as it stops and alerts you to unwanted memory access, its also the only thing that could stop the wc3 1.23 map virus exploit)

[Wesley]

Sorry to raise this thread again, but I have Spybot, Nod32 and Malwarebytes. Basically what I have found is that Malwarebytes never finds any viruses.

I just wanted to know if this is a bad thing, and are there any other good anti-virus programs that I can use to replace MalwareBytes

- EDIT: one thing I know is that everytime I use my flash drive in other computers and then return to mine, it has a virus and infects my pc. I just wanted to know if there is a program that pre-scans drives before they are activated?

You could probably use AVG 8.5 Free (http://www.filehippo.com/download_avg_antivirus/) in place of MalwareBytes. I use it and it picks up dozens of things all the time when I get stuff from friends. It scans my USB before I put it in (but I've got Autorun disabled) and it helped me get rid of Conficker which got onto my pc at one point.

If you want to prevent your computer from picking up viruses, just disable Autorun. Here's how (http://antivirus.about.com/od/securitytips/ht/autorun.htm).

[shewman]

- EDIT: one thing I know is that everytime I use my flash drive in other computers and then return to mine, it has a virus and infects my pc. I just wanted to know if there is a program that pre-scans drives before they are activated?

I have found that Avira AntiVir picks up the autorun virus on my flash drive as soon as I plug it in (it even detects it before windows asks me what I want to with my flash drive). Although I have found it only does that on my PC, so maybe it has to be configured in a certain way? (Not on my sister's laptop)

I have a BAT file that creates an autorun.inf folder with a con folder in it, apparently this stops autorun viruses as well (I put it on my sister's flash drive and haven't heard of anymore autorun viruses, so I guess it works). It can also remove a autorun virus on your flash drive (but you can also do that manually quite easily if it hasn't infected your PC)
Read more here: http://extratopics.com/security/successfully-creating-an-autoruninf-folder-with-this-batch-file.html
Download the BAT file here: http://extratopics.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/mkautorn.bat
(Just copy it onto your flash drive and run it)


Best way to stop usb viruses is to make a read only autorun file that is blank
I have had several goes at this technique but haven't found that it works. I have tried blank autorun files, blank recycler folders and nothing works (all hidden and read only too). Maybe its the viruses I encounter?

[Tigman_1]

I have found that Avira AntiVir picks up the autorun virus on my flash drive as soon as I plug it in (it even detects it before windows asks me what I want to with my flash drive). Although I have found it only does that on my PC, so maybe it has to be configured in a certain way? (Not on my sister's laptop)

I have a BAT file that creates an autorun.inf folder with a con folder in it, apparently this stops autorun viruses as well (I put it on my sister's flash drive and haven't heard of anymore autorun viruses, so I guess it works). It can also remove a autorun virus on your flash drive (but you can also do that manually quite easily if it hasn't infected your PC)
Read more here: http://extratopics.com/security/successfully-creating-an-autoruninf-folder-with-this-batch-file.html
Download the BAT file here: http://extratopics.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/mkautorn.bat
(Just copy it onto your flash drive and run it)


I have had several goes at this technique but haven't found that it works. I have tried blank autorun files, blank recycler folders and nothing works (all hidden and read only too). Maybe its the viruses I encounter?

COol thanks, thats really helpful!

[Necrolis]

I have had several goes at this technique but haven't found that it works. I have tried blank autorun files, blank recycler folders and nothing works (all hidden and read only too). Maybe its the viruses I encounter?its worked for me with numerous viruses, I just use the autorun file against the light ones, the "heavy" ones try to copy themselves(the folders + exe's) on first, but if they can't create thier folders they stop. blank recycler folders won't work, you need a blank file called recycler, else it'll just paste the viruses in, but if its a file(with no extensions), the windows folder/file rules prevents it from creating a folder with the same name as a file in the current path/directory

[Graal]

I'm wondering... my current anti virus is Avast 4.8 home. Is it a good anti-virus in that it does manage to get rid of viruses? My friend did a scan with bit-defender (which he found extremely irritating) and found over 500 viruses, I also did a scan on my PC (a 12 hour thorough scan0 and found 0... now is it that Avast is so good that it detects and deletes viruses before they infect my PC or isn't it finding them. Also I did try out AVG free edition and it was great, just started bugging me when I had to re register.

TBH, I don't trust AVG or Avast, I've only ever had problems with them. My mom had AVG on her machine for a year or so and then decided to buy Norton. Norton discovered more than 4000 viruses, which AVG failed to notice for some reason.

[shewman]

its worked for me with numerous viruses, I just use the autorun file against the light ones, the "heavy" ones try to copy themselves(the folders + exe's) on first, but if they can't create thier folders they stop. blank recycler folders won't work, you need a blank file called recycler, else it'll just paste the viruses in, but if its a file(with no extensions), the windows folder/file rules prevents it from creating a folder with the same name as a file in the current path/directory

Ok, thanks for clearing that up (the recycler folders).


TBH, I don't trust AVG or Avast, I've only ever had problems with them. My mom had AVG on her machine for a year or so and then decided to buy Norton. Norton discovered more than 4000 viruses, which AVG failed to notice for some reason.

There is no such thing as the perfect antivirus (i.e. an antivirus package that will pick up every virus that is created and detect no false positives). Different packages pick up different viruses (but there is also a chance that at least some of the 'new viruses that the other package didn't find' are false positives).

But let me throw in my 2 cents with regards AVG and avast!

I think AVG Free is a good antivirus considering it costs you nothing and gives you good protection. I personally stopped using it on my 2 PCs because:
On 1 PC after an update AVG 7.5 refused to work. I tried reinstalling and re-updating but nothing. So I uninstalled it and switched to avast! (I know I could have done a System Restore and that probably would have fixed it, but I was young and not so smart back then)
On my other PC, I stopped using AVG 8 because I found that it caused my PC to take a long time for Windows to be 'ready' after booting. I also found that when I was reading a DVD with pictures/videos on (NAG DVD's mostly) it would take a very long time for the DVD to be finished loading the thumbnail previews because AVG was (I assume, due to Task manager showing AVG's CPU usage increasing in these cases) scanning and it made it much longer to load than it should have. So I changed over to Avira AntiVir and no problems of that nature (Readiness after bootup was quicker and DVD's/Cd's with pictures/videos were quicker to load the previews). But the one thing I do like about AVG is how it handles viruses that it detects during a system scan (i.e. waiting until the end of the scan and being able to deal with the viruses individually).

I think avast! Home Edition is also a good antivirus package as well considering what you are getting for free. Why I prefer it to others is because I find it scans EVERYTHING that opens and closes on your PC (from web pages, to downloads, to processes etc.) and I KNOW it is doing it because of the tray icon spinning when it is scanning something, which makes me feel more secure and allows me to sleep well at night. Although the side effect of this is that it uses a lot of resources (typically I have found 40MB to 70MB (on average) of memory on a PC with 1GB of memory).

[Tigman_1]

Hey I tried your aoutrun trick, it's not doing so well, I plugged my flash drive into my school computers and came back to my pc, got 4 viruses. Any more tricks up your sleeves?

[shewman]

Hey I tried your aoutrun trick, it's not doing so well, I plugged my flash drive into my school computers and came back to my pc, got 4 viruses. Any more tricks up your sleeves?

Do you know what sort of viruses they were/their names? Maybe they were different to the autorun virus? (I have heard of so many really bad flash drive viruses that exist, so maybe it was one of those and that's why the BAT file didn't work?)

[Tigman_1]

Well they were all located in the bin and recycler...

[Necrolis]

you need to disable the autorun in conjunction with other things, such as an AV or the stuff I suggested above(note: there are multiple ways to disable autorun in the registary)

[Tigman_1]

http://f.imagehost.org/t/0380/Untitled-1_2.jpg (http://f.imagehost.org/view/0380/Untitled-1_2)

Here's a screeni, is there anything I can do to prevent viruses from copying themselves to my falsh drive?

Yes, I can prevent autorun on my pc, but can I prevent viruses getting onto my flash drive in the first place? (ie. "anti virus" for my flash drive)

[hhonneysett]

Bit Defender has served me well. Saved my PC from some nasty ****.

I also have BitDefender and without it i don't think I would have a PC today

[Demikid]

The antivirus you get should be deppendant of your actions if you only go on sites that are known to be safe you should get a free one if you go to a place where people go to all kinds of sites get one that you pay for.I know this because I had avg and got infected any way because of my brother

[Graal]

I've got the trial version of Norton Gaming Edition and I plan on buying it as soon as possible. It works well and hasn't let me down yet, but I hear a lot of other people complaining about Norton, so I think anybody should first try before they buy.

[Turk1sh]

So far Avast could remove those damn wrms/trj's hiding in recycler and system volume information. AVG couldn't get rid of them, it just triggered the virus alarm requesting to remove and they would just respawn, restarting the whole process. With avast bootscan, it removed all those bastards. Avast +1.

[moj]

So far Avast could remove those damn wrms/trj's hiding in recycler and system volume information. AVG couldn't get rid of them, it just triggered the virus alarm requesting to remove and they would just respawn, restarting the whole process. With avast bootscan, it removed all those bastards. Avast +1.

++1 for Avast! I built myslef a new pc about a month ago and installed avast on it, so far so good. IMO definately one of the best free AV software out there.

[x-scon]

I use Avast along with ThreatFire from PC Tools. It's great for picking up malware and trojans etc. Plus its free. AND you barely notice it in the memory. I would highly recommend it. I switched to ThreatFire from MalwareBytes. Go on, try it out!

[G8crasha]

As far as I know, AVGFree is the only free AntiVirus that works in 7. I generally use Avast! in XP. Apparently, reviews are saying that Norton isn't too bad for a choice, but for Rock Solid security, Kaspersky takes the cake! It's just a real system hog. I'll stick to my AVGFree though, until Avast! release a version that works in 7.

[Wesley]

As far as I know, AVGFree is the only free AntiVirus that works in 7. I generally use Avast! in XP. Apparently, reviews are saying that Norton isn't too bad for a choice, but for Rock Solid security, Kaspersky takes the cake! It's just a real system hog. I'll stick to my AVGFree though, until Avast! release a version that works in 7.

Actually, I had a few problems installing AVG on Windows 7, even with the new 8.5 version. I had to use compatibility mode to get it to install properly, but now its running just fine. Surprisingly, Bitdefender installs perfectly, and I have yet to try out Avast Home edition, although I have a copy here.

[Sanguinus08]

AVG is a top contender in my books. Comodo firewall is also one of the better ones out there. Kerio firewall is good, but can interfere

[Banshee1221]

I have been using Bitdefender for a while now and I must say I am pleased.
Although the Firewall on it is not the best that could be rectified by downloading another stand alone firewall such as Comodo or etc.

[Antharias]

AVG 8.5 is my personal preference as far as a free Antivirus goes. I will be switching over to NOD32 though when I have gotten the finances sorted out as I have used it in the past and it worked wonderfully for me.

As for other system protection, Advanced System Care works well as it has a lot of functions that work with other programmes and it's anti-spyware is pretty good.

Otherwise, final solution is to tell kids to grow up and not visit porn sites or download Warcraft 3 No-CD patches that keep replicating even though they are viruses. Watched somebody have to format his machine 7 times because he did that. Virus kept replicating and hiding every time he reapplied the patch. :P

[Shamanic aphex]

i use avg, the main thing being its free and works, that all i care about.

[Wesley]

I have recently installed Avira Personal Edition alongside AVG to combat Conficker, which infected me again after a brand new XP install. They work in marvelous harmony together, and I would highly recommend the combination, along with Avast+AVG. They eat up quite a bit of memory, but then again I suppose this is the best way to go about keeping myself from being infected again.

AntiVir Personal 9.0.0.407 (http://www.filehippo.com/download_antivir/)

AVG Free Edition 8.5.409 (http://www.filehippo.com/download_avg_antivirus/)

One of the reasons that has me hooked onto AntiVir is the process scanning, which AVG doesn't always do a very good job of, and the fact that it's so user friendly. Kudos to you, Avira.

[hawk]

I have recently installed Avira Personal Edition alongside AVG to combat Conficker, which infected me again after a brand new XP install. They work in marvelous harmony together, and I would highly recommend the combination, along with Avast+AVG. They eat up quite a bit of memory, but then again I suppose this is the best way to go about keeping myself from being infected again.

AntiVir Personal 9.0.0.407 (http://www.filehippo.com/download_antivir/)

AVG Free Edition 8.5.409 (http://www.filehippo.com/download_avg_antivirus/)

One of the reasons that has me hooked onto AntiVir is the process scanning, which AVG doesn't always do a very good job of, and the fact that it's so user friendly. Kudos to you, Avira.

I don't think its a wise idea to have 2 anti-virus programs running simultaneously.

[Wesley]

I don't think its a wise idea to have 2 anti-virus programs running simultaneously.

Actually, it depends on which two you use. For instance, its pointless using Norton and AVG because they both do the same thing. AVG and Avira, or AVG and Avast! work really well because together they offer something akin to a full-blown Anti-Virus and Anti-Malware package, which some pay hefty amounts for.

AVG scans the hard drive and the background processes, while Avira scans current processes, active applications, internet connections and flash drives on Autorun (which AVG also does, but not very often). Both consume quite a hefty amount of memory, but at least there's no disk thrashing, and since I'm back on XP there are more resources available to them.

[-<Blatz_ztalB>-]

nod32 internet security for me, its not free tho, but works really well and easy on the resources.

[xcal]

Eset Internet security hasn't let me down... except when I ignored the warning dialogs. I guess it didn't let me down then...

[TiNRiB]

Hello, just thought I'd share AVG9.0 (http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Software/9870.html) is out.