mks_vir BECOMES ArcaVir

[Eliot]

Here is a screenshot of the beta of ArcaVir 2005 and I must say that I am really impressed with it. A registry monitor as been added to the program and I have not tested this yet to comment. I have about 600 viren in my collection to test with. I'll post back on the scan results. :D

[Eliot]

Nailed every one of them, which NOD32 and KAV5 also catch.

[Honyak]

I dl'ed today and installed. It went very smooth and I am impressed with it also.
Have not done any testing but I am already using MKS 2004. I did not activate the firewall which is included also, so I cannot comment on that.
All in All it appears so far to have been worth the wait.

[larouse]

Where can get this Product ?

[Eliot]

{QUOTE-> I dl'ed today and installed. It went very smooth and I am impressed with it also.
Have not done any testing but I am already using MKS 2004. I did not activate the firewall which is included also, so I cannot comment on that.
All in All it appears so far to have been worth the wait. <-QUOTE}

Firewall?
??? I do have a firewall included in mine. LOL :D I am going to dl it again to make sure it wasn't added after I got my email from them. ;D

mks_vir is all that is available to the public, sorry. You can get this in roughly 2 weeks when it becomes final. *puppy*

[Eliot]

LMAO ;D Just got an email from support telling me to right click my tray icon to get access to the firewall. :D I was so into the program and its new features I had not looked there. Talking about fast support, I got an answer before I could get the email typed. ;D

[NAMOR]

Hey Eliot,

How is the resource usage compared to 2004?

[stormbyte]

{QUOTE-> Where can get this Product ? <-QUOTE}

www.stormbyte.com in about two weeks.

[Honyak]

{QUOTE-> LMAO ;D Just got an email from support telling me to right click my tray icon to get access to the firewall. :D I was so into the program and its new features I had not looked there. Talking about fast support, I got an answer before I could get the email typed. ;D <-QUOTE}

Sorry for not pointing that out, I misread and thought you had found it, is kinda hidden, it took me a while to find it.

I forgot to check the resource usage but I installed it on a comp for testing with a lower proc (1.3GH) than my main box and it was still very robust almost unnoticeable.

[Eliot]

About 50MB is what I see on the services. It has almost no impact on the system that I can tell. I have the heuristics on FFB too. (full friggin blast) ;D

[NAMOR]

Registry monitor is a nice addition. Seems to be running pretty good so far. ;D

[tazdevl]

{QUOTE-> About 50MB is what I see on the services. It has almost no impact on the system that I can tell. I have the heuristics on FFB too. (full friggin blast) ;D <-QUOTE}

How does that compare with 2004?

[Eliot]

Oops. I should have said it runs the same or tad faster. I think the 50MB is pretty much the same too. I would like to say that I ran a full scan just prior to looking at it. :D

[NAMOR]

Are there any other changes under the hood, besides the firewall and Regmonitor? Is it the same scanning engine as 2004? BTW the help file needs translation ;)

[BlueZannetti]

{QUOTE-> Oops. I should have said it runs the same or tad faster. I think the 50MB is pretty much the same too. I would like to say that I ran a full scan just prior to looking at it. :D <-QUOTE}I'd agree that the RAM footprint i roughly that of the 2004 version. Not a major chnage there.

My curiousity raised (isn't it always) I grabbed a copy since I do have an active license. This is definitely a major update. In mks_vir 2004 I was plagued with some issue that resulted in a spontaneous reboot soon after logging on. I came up with some not too satisfactory ways to avoid the problem, but we could never seem to really solve it - note I also seemed to be the only user suffering this. Well, it appears to be solved in the beta version. Smoother operation than 2004 all around.

Speed is still excellent. I also did a few quick use challenge tests (trojans dropped during surfing) identical to those mentioned here (http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=55891). In this completely non-representative sampling, ArcaVir is holding it's own with KAV, which I find impressive.

The user interface is very similar to 2004, but is developing cleaner lines and better aesthetics.

My overall impression is very favorable thus far.

Blue

[Blackcat]

{QUOTE-> About 50MB is what I see on the services. <-QUOTE}
Therefore, not ideal for the more 'mature' computer!

[BlueZannetti]

{QUOTE-> Therefore, not ideal for the more 'mature' computer! <-QUOTE}
Generally I'd say yes. This is about the same RAM usage that I'm seeing with KAV 5.0 WS. On the high end among the AV's I've tested. However, if you look at CPU utilization, it looks rather benign, which reinforces the other casual impression of having minimal impact on system responsiveness. One other thing, as with the previous version, it is very easy to work with a full system scan in progress - very little in the way of system delay to the console activity.

If I had an older, RAM and CPU light PC, my guess is that some of the classic lighter AV solutions would be more appropriate although I can't test that directly myself.

Blue

[BlueZannetti]

A couple of other comments:

As NAMOR points out above, the help file needs some help. Looking into it in a little more detail, the main help document is a pdf file. There are two listed to account for the main languages covered (arcavir_en.pdf and arcavir_pl.pdf). Right now, despite the name difference, they seem to be the same file. I assume the translation hasn't made it to the beta release.

The firewall, which Eliot notes is controlled by a right click to the menu from the system tray icon, is a separate application (firewall.exe). I've not taken a look at it yet.

Blue

[no13]

http://stormbyte.com/forums/viewtopic.php?topic=57
An unflattering discussion about mks_vir. Comments?
[I haven't used mks_vir yet, but by the looks of things here, i may just put it on my "trial before system format" list.]

[BlueZannetti]

{QUOTE-> http://stormbyte.com/forums/viewtopic.php?topic=57
An unflattering discussion about mks_vir. Comments?
[I haven't used mks_vir yet, but by the looks of things here, i may just put it on my "trial before system format" list.] <-QUOTE}
no13,

Looks like a standard false positive issue to me. Resolved within a few days. Not unlike any of the other AV products with reasonably aggressive heuristic approaches.

Blue

[stormbyte]

{QUOTE-> A couple of other comments:
I assume the translation hasn't made it to the beta release.
<-QUOTE}

That is correct. But new translation will be there soon:)

[Honyak]

{QUOTE-> http://stormbyte.com/forums/viewtopic.php?topic=57
An unflattering discussion about mks_vir. Comments?
[I haven't used mks_vir yet, but by the looks of things here, i may just put it on my "trial before system format" list.] <-QUOTE}

Those issues have been resolved in MKS 2004 and the DVDshrink.exe FP seems to have been fixed in 2005.

[rdsu]

In my opinion, the ArcaVir is a great AV, but I don't like the pictures in the GUI. They seems dirty and very little defined...
Maybe is a like of the developers...

[RejZoR]

These are JPEG artifacts. Image is compressed terribly bad.

[stormbyte]

{QUOTE-> Here is a screenshot of the beta of ArcaVir 2005 and I must say that I am really impressed with it. <-QUOTE}

More screenshots:
http://stormbyte.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=60

[synapse]

theres a problem (maybe a memory leak) when arca scans .cab files for unreal tournament engine, it would freeze up everytime i tried it.

[stormbyte]

{QUOTE-> theres a problem (maybe a memory leak) when arca scans .cab files for unreal tournament engine, it would freeze up everytime i tried it. <-QUOTE}

Can you send me one of those cabs to support@stormbyte.com so we can investigate and fix this problem?


ps. please report ALL problems to either: support@stormbyte.com or by posting on our forum
http://stormbyte.com/forums/ under Report bugs category.
Thanks!

Mariusz

[synapse]

i deleted the folder after the tests' :( the .cab files are all gone

[Eliot]

I'll load my old Splinter Cell, Pandora Tommorrow and see if that happens here. ;)

[synapse]

i dont think thats ran off the UT Engine

[Eliot]

I didn't mean to imply that I thought it did, lol. I was just testing to see if any game would cause a conflict. ;D Went thru Pandora Tommorrow till I got kill't and my memory usage is less than it is after a full scan. :) I love this ArcaVir 2005.

[dirtcheap]

mks_vir still mks-vir not a arcavir. I have a full version of mks_vir 2005 on my hand now

[Eliot]

I have that too. I am not sure what is going on here. ???

[tazdevl]

I'm very disappointed it's still using the same piece of crap updater.

Said it with 2004 and I'll say it again... look at your competitors. An updater shouldn't be a point of differentiation if your competitors all handle things in a similar manner, it's a point of irritation for the end-user. You should emulate best practices in this case.

[Mele20]

Hmmm. I was thinking of trying it again, but not if the updater is still crap. That was my problem when I tried it before. It sounds like a wonderful improvement and I really liked the original mks except that I could not update. Why fix other stuff and neglect the updater? I have seen this problem with other good avs which I also avoid. I'm having no problem with Bit Defender though. It updates flawlessly.

[Honyak]

I'm very disappointed it's still using the same piece of crap updater.

What is your issue with the updater? With ArcaVir 2005, I schedule 2 updates daily and with 2005 release, it even updates while I am logged off, 2004 did not update until I logged back on and it did that automatically. Or if I want to manually check updates, I just right click the icon and click, update istallation and it does it for me.

[SDS]

Updaters should be built in, and not a part of task manager. Task manager is quite buggy, but also requires a password, I don't password my systems.

But thats the least of MKS's problems from looking it over. Its poor interface with bad graphics and false positives are a major issue. Still, it looks interesting, I might buy it when I see if they improve it.

[Honyak]

Updaters should be built in, and not a part of task manager. Task manager is quite buggy, but also requires a password, I don't password my systems.

I see what you mean, I still cannot run a scheduled system scan without being logged on, so I use eXtendia AVK (single) to run during the morning a couple times a week.

As far as the interface it could be much better but it runs so light, provides very good RT protection and is easy to configure so I am satisfied with it. I never really open it anyway, I just run everything from the quicklaunch icon.

Regards

[likuidkewl]

I agree the updater should be alot more lean, another thing i loathe is that when I right click on the ArcaVir Icon I have a screen full of options, IMO they need one centralized command console.
But it does run light, even scanning memory usage is negligible. As I am running Ewido and scanning with AcraVir and browsing the internet.
http://www.zer0-tec.net/Likuidkewl/AVStuff/ArcaVir05Mem.png

[SDS]

Thats not an accurate picture, in task manager you need to go to View:Columns, and then turn on Virtual Memory. Combine Memory + Virtual Memory, and thats true usage.

[Honyak]

Combine Memory + Virtual Memory, and thats true usage.

Thanks for pointing that out, I checked and total usage was 14,936.

[tiagozt]

For ppl that wrote that have mks_vir 2005:
English version?
In the site I found a link to download, but the link are the same to English and Polish "homepage" of mks-vir. I believed that it's in Polish and din't download.
Have English version of mks_vir 2005 or mks_vir 2005 English = Arcavir?

Thanks
TZT

[Honyak]

I believe that MKS 2005 will install in english and that it may change later to only Polish. At install it gives the option of English or Polish.

[dirtcheap]

{QUOTE-> For ppl that wrote that have mks_vir 2005:
English version?
In the site I found a link to download, but the link are the same to English and Polish "homepage" of mks-vir. I believed that it's in Polish and din't download.
Have English version of mks_vir 2005 or mks_vir 2005 English = Arcavir?

Thanks
TZT <-QUOTE}
I Have mks_vir 2005 around 18mb and it is multi language during install you choose polish or english if you want

[hojtsy]

Hi,
Any chance someone could post a screenshot of an alert sent by the Registry Monitor component?
-hojtsy-