F-Prot 3.16a - *New version released!*

Yes, Frisk Software announced that the slowdown bug with the latest version was fixed.

Waiting for someone to try as I do not have time right now.

Any comments?

 

I had the opportunity to install and try F-prot new version out. Installation was quick and smoothed. After that had numerous problems. Now I updated all the files first, and than began accessing the web. Went to eiccar.com attempted to open both zip files...........boom .....!!! F-prot crashed....froze my pc up had to reboot. Secondly oh yes forgot....when installing in the beginning it tried to access the web, I had to manually tweak it so it would. I am on cable. Went to shut down my pc boom........!!!!!!!1.....crashed again. I uninstalled it and sent a email to tech support....Now let me say this....I am a license user of F-prot and prior versions worked flawless on my pc....until this new versions.

 

I just tried version 3.16a and it still has slowdowns on my pc. Had to go back to version 3.15b. Only got 14 days of my trial left and it's not looking good. Looks likely that my trial will be over by the time they fix this slowdown problem. I really hope they get it sorted in the next 7 days at the most. It will still give me a full week to test it to death. Here's hoping...

muf

 

What is happening to Frisk Software

If they do these mistakes (releasing buggy security software) as they are one of the oldest companies in the market, what would others do?

Bad reputation.. Bad..

 

Frisk has been around a long time for a reason--they make a quality product, and they have a GREAT reputation--your comments notwithstanding.

It's to their credit that they are addressing the issue mentioned as quickly as they are, and a bit short-sighted to allude to Frisk 'falling apart' or "releasing buggy software". There's a couple of AV's sold in big yellow and big red boxes that have a record of causing more issues than anything Frisk has ever released.

 

I have to agree to the fact that Frisk has in my opinion always made a good product. Even mercedes and Cadillac have recalls.

 

I think that F-prot has at very good reputation, some times the things does not work fine, but I am sure that F-Prot will solve this very soon.

I installed F.prot 3.16a and was Bad idea....2 times freeze and when was running my Laptop was very slow, I unistalled and come back with Kaspersky Pro 5, good product but take many resources.

Thank you,

 

I'd add that Frisk actually has INTELLIGENT and gracious email support personnel. I can't say the same about the vendors who sell the av in those big red and yellow boxes. (Not to imply that all support personnel at those companies are bad but as a general rule).

 

3.16a is running fine for me. Of course, I immediately disabled Frisk_Monitor & didn't install the Scheduling module. Why? For the same reasons that I still drive a stick-shift.

Also, I uninstalled 3.16 before installing 3.16a. I think installing a new version over an old version is just asking for grief -- especially when it involves an antivirus program. Butt I myte bee rong.

 

Misunderstanding..

I *know* that Frisk Software has a "GREAT" reputation. But it does not fit to such a prestigous company to release "buggy" (yes 3.16 is buggy) software without proper testing.

It was acceptable for them to release 3.16 with some glitches but after that people say that 3.16a is still defective and slowing their system down. This is not acceptable for Frisk. Reputation is something you earn in time and it is not easy to keep it. This last incident showed that one could not trust Frisk Software that they release properly tested software *all the time*. Period.

I just mentioned that this repeated "slow-down" occurence and not solving it for nearly one week is *not good* for their reputation. They will not lose all their credit in one night but we should accept the fact that this is bad..

I use F-Prot and have always liked it. So this is not a love & hate issue.

Just my two cents...

 

Most people would agree with this statement.

I am sure that Frisk carried out extensive testing before releasing the new version. It is extremely rare that software companies release a product that runs perfectly on all computers and without any bugs.

As stated above, it is virtually impossible to release bug-free software that runs perfectly on all combinations of Operating Systems/software/hardware found on different computer systems.

In my experience of using/trialing many AV programs in the last few years, I have had some kind of problem with ALL of them.

The key question is how fast the AV vendor is in successfully solving the problems. I am sure Frisk is very much on the ball in this respect.

 

Hi,

I am running F-Prot 3.16a downloaded and installed and update the signatures. Everything is all well. In detecting, scanning, installing, update nothing wrong to signal.

It is able to detect packed and repack with other packers without any issues.

Honestly don't know what causes some of you guys to have issues.

 

I put it down to luck. Yeah, we have none of it!!!

 

Just to be clear on this. I uninstalled version 3.15b and then installed version 3.16a. I get the slowdowns. It is very obvious when opening ACE Utilities or PestPatrol. ACE utilities opened in less than 1 second using 3.15b and PestPatrol takes about 10 seconds. But when using version 3.16a ACE utilities takes about 10 seconds to open and PestPatrol takes easily 20 seconds or more to open. They open faster when i have KAV resident running. But this is the whole point. I want to swap to F-Prot so i don't have slowdowns. Frisk have already intermated in an e-mail that they are addressing the problem. I'm please for the folks who are not experiencing this slowdown, but some of us are experiencing it. It's not because we have a million application's running simultaneously, it's because there is something not working quite right in the resident protection on version 3.16a. But it's obvious that it's either a problem with certain O/S's or the way certain application's run that is conflicting with F-prot 3.16a. I'm hopeful Frisk will sort it soon.

muf

 

I am guessing your problem is having KAV resident while using another AV
KAV tries to scan everything you click on. You should never have two AV's
real time protection on at the same time. I would be curious to know how many of those witht he slowdown problem are running KAV also.

Bruce

 

Most of the people around here already know about the fact that it causes problems when two AVs are used together.

F-Prot, by itself causes slow-downs.. Still no solution from Frisk, and the message saying that 'there is a problem about it' has disappeared from their support site. Maybe they think the problem has already been solved...

I'll stick with 3.15b...

 

Firstly, to clear up the thing about running two AV's resident simultaneously. I am not running them at the same time. When i referred to things being faster with KAV running, i meant KAV on it's own as resident. I NEVER run two at the same time, never had, never will.

Now to a more interesting point. I can not use 3.16a due the slowdown problem. 3.15b runs sweet as you like. I contacted Frisk sales and asked that if i purchase F-Prot then will i be able to use 3.15b. They say that when you purchase it that you can only download the current version. So it seems that if i purchase it then i will get 3.16a. There is no option to use a previous version. How twisted and demented is that!!! I am willing to purchase and use 3.15b but they won't let me. I find it absolutely ridiculous. I've got 2 days left of my trial period and once it runs out i have to look for another AV. To say i've miffed is the understatement of the century!!!

muf

 

Ignore sales and contact their support section. They may give you a download site for 3.15b. My past experience with Frisk support is that they do try and give you as much help as possible.

Failing this, give Command Antivirus a trial; http://www.authentium.co.uk/matrix/support/service/offers/Testdrive.cfm
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=18801
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=43122&highlight=Command Antivirus

It is a low resource AV, similar to F-Prot.

 

To add to BC's comments...

Command uses an earlier version of the F-Prot engine. Thus, CAV's effectiveness is quite on a par with that of F-prot, plus CAV is less expensive than F-Prot. However, Command's tech support is not nearly so responsive as F-prot's.

 

Hi guys,

For over a month now, I've been emailing with F-Prot's Tech Support as to why v3.16a slowed down my system so dramatically and why I had no problems with v3.15b. After reading some of the posts in this forum, a possible solution suddenly dawned on me. I will quote the full text of my email to F-Prot, hopefully I'm not breaking any of 'Wilders' rules by doing so.. I rather hope that my experiences will help someone else on the forums.

Tonight's email to F-Prot:

Hi Valtyr,

Here's an update to the problem I reported. After reading a bit on 'Wilders Security forum' (https://www.wilderssecurity.com/archive/index.php/t-56112.html), I noticed a passage where someone mentioned that he too was experiencing the same 'slowdowns' as I was and then he listed some of the applications he was running. It suddenly dawned on me that I had never tried to remove, one by one, all of my memory-resident programs and see if one of them would somehow interact with F-Prot. I rebooted and started removing application processes one by one. First, I removed PDVDSERV.exe (PowerDVD), then PPMemCheck (PestPatrol), then Skype, then Copernic. Between each 'removal', I opened and closed a couple of Word documents. The reason why I did this was the fact that the main difference between v3.15b and v3.16a was that opening and closing Word documents with v3.16b took at least twice as long. In fact, most things on my system took twice as long.

Then I got to the 'UD Screen Saver', a screensaver from United Devices that I installed which allows my PC in idle time to run calculations for cancer-research. I removed it's process in the Windows Task Manager and lo' and behold.. all of a sudden, F-Prot v3.16a was practically as fast again as v3.15b. Word documents open and close again as fast as with v3.15b installed and it feels like I have my system back again..

So there you are. I'll report this to the people of United Devices like I report it to you. I will put my plans to cancel my subsciption to F-Prot on hold and will continue to use v3.16a (and F-Prot) for awhile longer. Hopefully, a lot longer.. grin.

PS. Please find enclosed another report from the debugger tool that you sent me awhile ago and please note that overall scanning time is almost back to normal. Allthough you mentioned before that it made no difference to the tests with the debuggger tool which version of F-Prot I was running, I would now like to draw your attention to the following:

- it now takes 9:57 minutes to scan drive C: with F-Prot v3.16a installed and the UD screensavewr removed ('slownew_16a.txt')
- it takes 16:38 mins with the UD screensaver process resident in memory and F-Prot 3.16a installed ('slowrepc_16a.txt')
- it takes 8:17 mins with the UD screensaver process memory-resident and F-Prot v3.15b installed ('slowrepc_15b.txt')

As you can see, there is some interaction between F-Prot v3.16a and the UD screensaver process. Do let me know how you think about all this.

Kind regards,
Erik Coolen

 

I also sent them an e-mail a few days ago about problems with the Eyetide Viewer (screensaver) slowing down on startup with the Real Time Protector running. They haven't replied yet, so they are probably investigating the issue.

This is one of the great things about FRISK Software International. They take the time to answer questions and help, rather than using a generic form letter blaming everything on something else, while talking about how great their products and support are. I would rather wait a little while for a reply instead of getting a useless reply within an hour.

I also asked about version 4. Maybe I should call the number on their web site about this.

 

Now this is strange.. I have no screensavers installed and there is still the slow-down...

3.15b is perfect, 3.16a crawling... No such memory resident apps running on my system, just f-prot and kerio firewall 2.1.5...

Maybe the clue with the screensaver solves the problem all together. Hopefully..

What I don't understand is whether it is so difficult to recreate the problem at the test center. It's been over a month now and still no apparent solution.

Wait and see..

 

I found FProt very buggy over a year ago.. People think its ultra light, but it seemed to always find this that it conflicted with.

I gave up on them awhile back.

 

This is the number 1 reason I never bought F-Prot when my trial ran out. There's no way to exclude problem programs. I have no idea why such a basic and essential feature is still missing.