Do you need any AV?

Osaban · Sep 24, 2007

Peter2150 said:

Hi CSJ

There are other factors. I've tried a bunch of AV's and have license for most of them. But my machine really runs so much better without them. One can shift the problem in other ways. All my browsing is done thru sandboxie. If I am going a bit risky, then I run ShadowDefender and then go thru sandboxie. And if I am going to the darkside, I but my desktop in Shadowmode, then fire up the VM machine, and use SHadowdefend and Sandboxie on it.

Same thing with email. Usually I just delete, but if really curious, I will take the above steps and get it from webmail. That way sandboxie and Shadowdefend are on duty.

I just get tired of the impact of the AV's. Didn't realize it was there, as they had been on the machine since day one.

Pete
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I also feel more and more that sandboxing and virtualization make AVs redundant. Whether you are infected or not who cares, reboot and it's gone.

Still if you want to save something from your session how are you going to determine whether it's infected or not? People say use your brains... With rootkits?

I'm still using an AV because it is the only way to check if something is there. If it misses, well bad luck, but you might not know you are infected for a long time, and giving enough time all good AVs will eventually detect the new nasty.

Are all AVs impacting your machine so noticeably?

Peter2150 · Sep 24, 2007

EASTER said:

I have to echo those same sentiments. Stemming all the way back to Windows 98, AV's by the very nature of the way their fashioned, have to be designed to infilitrate if you will EVERY file on the system. How else does one explain that while engaged and you run across lets say a page with even a script virus in text form, your AV (if in database), will immediately pop up or with some disable the page entirely as a precaution, and that IS a very good activity that it should perform. In like manner, should some virus manage to enter a file your AV will at-once alert then try to clean the affected file, whichever it might be.

But like Peter2150, i always found them very stressful to my systems, even on XP, that is up untill KIS6, which to my surprise, i noticed didn't burden resources like many AV's have done in the past.

With the onset of HIPS & Virtualization technology though, i've migrated away from "resident" AV's to a more reasonable On-Demand scanning for viruses.
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One of the things I've recently learned, in trying to isolate a problem, is the only to be sure something is a problem is to get it off the system. That's why I've taken AV"s and AS's off completely. No realtime, no scanning, by by. It's working well.

Diver · Sep 24, 2007

On this system stress thing, I thought I had a Vista slow file copy issue. Turns out my AV was scanning inside of a program installer file that had many objects inside when I copied the file. Vista highlighted the problem as the time calculation box did not close until the scan was complete, a behavior that appears to be different from XP.

See this link for an example of AV drag on system peformance:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=186331&page=2

I don't consider it to be definitive, and its quite possible KAV benefited from istreams, which I believe resets after each update.

kenshi · Sep 25, 2007

It costs me nothing to have a resident AV particularly a free one. Nuff said.

Peter2150 · Sep 25, 2007

kenshi said:

It costs me nothing to have a resident AV particularly a free one. Nuff said.
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Sure it does. System performance. May not matter to you but it is there.

kenshi · Sep 25, 2007

Peter2150 said:

Sure it does. System performance. May not matter to you but it is there.
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How much performance degradation are we talking about here? I am currently using AVG and while its not perfect, I can still play online games and get my work done. I am certainly not going to be scanning while playing or doing some crucial work but I don't need to shut it down. With most AV you can control when it should be scanning which I will do when I'm out for lunch or doing something else. The overall my point is that having it is not that big of a deal.

ronjor · Sep 25, 2007

If users have found an antivirus program that works for them, they should use it.

There is absolutely no reason not to use any antivirus program that may stop malware, if the antivirus program runs well on your system.

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