Alternatives to Avast Home

[Seishin]

Personally after being infected with a Boot Sector Virus (Now, I look like a teenager that just started using their first PC) I decided to dump Avast.

I got that infection after running an infected CD even though I scanned it first with Avast and Ewido before running it.

I don't care if I have to pay $100 bucks a year to maintain the new AV as long as it prevents these kinds of things from happening ever again.

So what alternatives do you suggest me?

Initially, I was thinking of any of these two:

1. Kaspersky AV (just the AV not the suite)
2. NOD32


Cheers.

[tobacco]

Before the Trend Micro Singer jumps in, i would say that either one of those 2 would be an excellent choice.:thumb:

[JerryM]

Also try Avira both free and Premium, and F-Secure.

Jerry

[aigle]

Hello, if free-- Antivir

If paid-- NOd or Kaspersky

BTW, no AV can gaurante that u will not get a virus again.

[Seishin]

-{ Quote: "BTW, no AV can gaurante that u will not get a virus again." }-

But a boot sector virus, come on!

I think I'll shoot for NOD32 as I am running Comodo and forgot that it got issues with KAV.

I didn't like AntiVir nag screens. That's just BS.

Cheers.

[rdsu]

The new KAV is very good, but I still prefer NOD32...

Try both and see what is the best for you and your system... ;)

[Marcos]

Could you provide more details about the boot sector virus? When running Windows, it won't let you to access crucial system areas such as boot / MBR sectors. I'm curious as to how you got infected and whether it's not just a false positive. Anyway, you can always contact the AV vendor for assistence, whichever AV you choose.

[lodore]

kaspersky, antivir or bitdefender

[nadirah]

Let me offer my advice to you. You can change to whatever antivirus product you want, its your choice, but just think, would changing to another antivirus better protect you from viruses? The answer is: No. Simply because there is nothing that can replace user knowledge, behaviour and discipline.

Why do I say that? Try it out yourself, keep switching to whatever security product which IYO is 'better'. You will find that whichever security product you use, you yourself is still the best protection for your own computer. But let me be frank with you that there's no such thing as 'switching security products will protect me better'.

There is NO such thing as:
BEST antivirus
BEST firewall
BEST HIPS
BEST anti-whatever...

In computer security, there are so many ways to 'get around the barrier'. So in what way do you think that changing your antivirus program will prevent such infections from occurring again?
Go ahead...change all you want, at the end of the day you'll come to fully realize the words in bold...

Since you said you got the infection from an infected cd, then you cannot blame anything or anyone for the infection your computer suffered, blame yourself. And since the infection is from an infected cd, did you have autorun enabled?

If you were suspicious of the content on the cd or if you knew that it was infected, then you should've known better than to insert it into the computer in the first place then all this wouldn't have happened. You scanned the cd with avast and ewido. Were avast and ewido up-to-date when you scanned the cd?

Possiblities are: Avast and ewido were not up-to-date and thus could not detect the virus.
Avast and ewido were up-to-date but that particular virus was not included in the definitions yet, 0-day.

Driving home the message, the moral of the story here is all about responsibility. I can go on and on, but hopefully you should be able to learn a valuable lesson from this experience. Go ahead and get the antivirus product you think is the "best", but I don't believe in set-it-and-forget-it.

You got a antivirus product, what do you do with it? Configure it to suit your needs and be responsible enough to keep it up-to-date. But that is not the end of all your worries, most of all, practise safe behaviour on the computer. I was once a boy who knew nuts about computer software and have faced lots of perplexing problems just like yours, but I learned the hard way eventually, all on my own, through many experiences and difficulties. I don't like to go into detail about things, instead I prefer to use simplified language to communicate with people.

Infected? Blaming your security product for failing to stop the malware in time? Think again. Try an alternative antivirus program and hope that it will prevent such kind of infections? No guarantees on that. How can you be certain that the antivirus program will always protect you from all kinds of malware?

[Seishin]

-{ Quote: "Could you provide more details about the boot sector virus? When running Windows, it won't let you to access crucial system areas such as boot / MBR sectors. I'm curious as to how you got infected and whether it's not just a false positive. Anyway, you can always contact the AV vendor for assistence, whichever AV you choose." }-

Unfortunately, I can't since my machine came up right after rebooting with the black screen saying that I had a "BSV" and if I wanted to recover the OS. I couldn't go past that point only press F2 and reinstall.


Nadirah,

I got infected because I played an infected CD that my AV failed to detect.

OK, I'll be getting now a backup AV and keep Avast.



Cheers.

[trjam]

-{ Quote: "Let me offer my advice to you. You can change to whatever antivirus product you want, its your choice, but just think, would changing to another antivirus better protect you from viruses? The answer is: No. Simply because there is nothing that can replace user knowledge, behaviour and discipline.

Why do I say that? Try it out yourself, keep switching to whatever security product which IYO is 'better'. You will find that whichever security product you use, you yourself is still the best protection for your own computer. But let me be frank with you that there's no such thing as 'switching security products will protect me better'.

There is NO such thing as:
BEST antivirus
BEST firewall
BEST HIPS
BEST anti-whatever...

" }-

I disagree. There may not be a best, but there are varying qualities which each product. With AVs, their are better or worse detection rates. The same goes for Antispyware. The one thing I have learned here is to listen for a common theme. I am, (one) of two, of the worst bandwagon jumpers. Tell me this is the best, I get it. Tell me the next day, this is the best, I get it. Bottom line, look for a common theme for whatever application you are looking for and you cant go wrong. The best advice and most astute posters come here, but just dont be hasty.

[DaveD]

Although you cannot provide more details of that virus since you had to reinstall the OS, you still must have the infected CD.

Where did you get the infected CD?
Did it have some type of autorun feature?
What type of programs were on it?

I'd suggest scanning it again with another AV, for curiosity sake, but that may not be the best option. Maybe BartPE with McAfee plugin... that's probably what I would try.

[lodore]

if you look on av compartives there are av's with better detection than avast and faster updates.

lodore

[gerardwil]

-{ Quote: "Let me offer my advice to you. You can change to whatever antivirus product you want, its your choice, but just think, would changing to another antivirus better protect you from viruses? The answer is: No. Simply because there is nothing that can replace user knowledge, behaviour and discipline.

" }-

Reading your advice I talked to my wife and kids this morning. I told them how to behave, how to be disciplined and subscribed them for a 2-year "know everything about safe computing" school. I dismantled their machines and promised they can use them in september 2008 again but only if they pass their examines.
This took me only 10 minutes and everybody was very happy after that, though asking me why I haven't done this earlier.

But now at this moment I insert a CD in my drive,burned and given to me by OceanBreeze(call him that because I do not want his real name here at Wilders), I checked with my AV, AT and A-whatever......everything clean.
I know how to behave and I think I am disciplined, my knowledge is about 80% (my neighbour told me).
But now I doubt: should I run the CD or not?


To Gesc question:

I think both are decent AV's but there are a few others as well.
Did you already have a look here: http://www.av-comparatives.org/

Gerard

[duke1959]

I understand the CD problem, but just want to add that I have been happy with AOL Active Virus Shield. No spam, E-Mails from AOl, or problems. Also no PC slow downs using it and Comodo Firewall together. AVS offers fast and numerous updates, (more than Avast) great scanning options, Quarantine, Back Up, and has the Kaspersky engine. (Neck and neck with Antivir in the AV Comparitives) It also offers spyware and adaware protection and detection. I have used Antivir in the past and liked that AV too, but update proceedure wasn't my cup of tea. No problems uninstalling AVS (when trying other AV's) with virtually no traces afterwards that running RegSeeker didn't find and eliminate. It is said AVS will continue to be free after the one year subcription is over as well. There has been some conflicts with it and SKPF however, so you never know. My son swears by Avast, and I always liked it too. Just an opinion here on AVS, but a satisfied one so far.

[Seishin]

Thx for the last replies.

Now, finding the on-demand AV seems to be another issue. I just finished installing and uninstalling AVG free. What a bummer! The automatic update didn't work, no matter how hard I tried.

Any suggestions (other than AntiVir as I don't like those nag screens).


Cheers.

[kalpik]

^^ Those nag screens can be very easily disabled ;)

[Seishin]

-{ Quote: "^^ Those nag screens can be very easily disabled ;)" }-

Tried that, last time I used AntiVir (about 3 weeks ago) in XP Home edition.

They won't go away when logged under Admin. Under Limited was fine.

[theflamingbush]

avira classic is an excellent free av, the only downside is that it has no pop3 support. but if you use AVG suite and turn off the resident shield, and use the avira Guard (superior anyway!) then there should be no compatability problems! ;)

two for 1! :).....and they complement each other quite nicely.

I use the Avira for gaurd and as a primary AV, and the AVG as a email scanner (online) and secondary AV(on demand)....

both FREE!....and excellent cover!....coupled with SSM, sandboxie, and a few other free spyware proggies for ondemand scans youve pretty much got yourself a complete security suite.

I use zilla machines for email and surfing, and have XP sp2, and partitioned Linux for alternate work!;)

no conflicts so far!.....and solid defence!

[RejZoR]

I join Marcos comment. Getting infected with boot virus in these days is pretty much impossible. So without knowing whats really infected we'll hardly say what really happened. But personally i wouldn't dump avast! just because of one silly boot virus which is probably not even real (boot dump or a false positive on some file).

[Inspector Clouseau]

-{ Quote: "Before the Trend Micro Singer jumps in" }-

Muhahahaha ;D That was really a good one! :D

[lodore]

sure was:)

anyway oddly he hasnt turned up yet lol

[duke1959]

Just want to add that I liked Antivir PE very much , it was low on resource usage, maybe now even less than AVG Free is, and had far superior heuristics too. (which AVS doesn't have now, but will) The only thing was that since I share the PC with my wife, and had Antivir set to update morning, noon, and night, (I'm on Braodband) there would be times that the nag screen would be there when she logged on and need the ok button hit. No big deal, but this simply doesn't happen with AVS. Also I had to set the morning update for later in the A.M. when my wife wasn't on so the update proceedure didn't happen while she was. This wasn't crucial either, but I wouldn't get the early morning updates until later after I got on, and then of course deal with the nag screen myself. I have heard you can log onto the Secret Administrator in Safe Mode and change some settings, but installing AVS is just easier. I did ask in another Forum about the prospect of Avira meeting us halfway by at least having the nag screen go away on it's own after a time, but apparently even this wasn't an option.

[Sputnik]

-{ Quote: "I join Marcos comment. Getting infected with boot virus in these days is pretty much impossible. So without knowing whats really infected we'll hardly say what really happened. But personally i wouldn't dump avast! just because of one silly boot virus which is probably not even real (boot dump or a false positive on some file)." }-
I agree with RejZoR, boot viruses are from the old DOS and Windows 95 times. Look at these descriptions from Kaspersky:

-{ Quote: "Boot viruses can also mean a lot of trouble to the users of the new operating systems (Novell, Windows95, OS/2). In spite of the fact that the above mentioned systems work with disks directly (overriding BIOS calls), which blocks the virus and makes its further spreading impossible, the code of the virus sometimes, although in very few cases, receives control after the system reboot. Therefore the "March6" virus can "live" in the MBR of the server and not influence the server's operation and productivity in any way. However in case of an accidental reboot on the sixth of March this virus will completely destroy all the data on the disk." }-
Source: http://www.avp.ch/avpve/classes/boot.stm

[the Tester]

Either version of Avira or Kaspersky.

[farmerlee]

If you are looking at paid for software then nod32 is great, they have a 30day trial you can try out. I've also been playing around with the new Norton antivirus 2007 and it seems pretty good imo, you can get a 15 day trial with norton.

[btman]

Get Kaspersky it's on TR now.... close to a new one... you should wait and get it... after like 25 beta's..