Good roll-your-own suite and Avast 4-Home Problem

Been looking at posts here trying to come up with a good set of SW for my kids computer (XP-Pro). Also want to break free of the suite solutions for my own computer (BitDefender license soon to expire) so saw this as a good opportunity to test the waters.

On the firewall side there seems to be many who like Online Armor so I installed the free version and it appears to be a very nice product.

Next was to decide on an AV solution and many here are very positive on Avast 4-Home on the no cost side. Everything installed great and I even did a whole system scan which showed all was clean. My daughter then logged onto her account and the software requested registration (which I said OK to). At this point Avast stopped working and the system pretty much froze. Didn't even respond to ctrl-alt-del. Reboot brought the same with the little tray icon for Avast indicating it wasn't working. When I tried to start it, a dialog box came up saying it had some rpc error. After this the system pretty much froze. Restarted in safe mode and tried again. Info from the vendor then said to go and check if the service was running and start it if it wasn't. The Avast service status was "starting" so that was a dead end. Avast online help then said to do a repair install. Didn't fix the problem. The final solution was to uninstall Avast completely. Installed Avira AntiVir-free, and everything is back to normal.

Avast seemed like it has a good feature set especially since kids are using this machine and it has the anti-spyware stuff. Any idea what may have gone wrong with Avast and how to make it work for me?

If I purchase a license for the paid version of online armor would that fill in the gap? Their website says it has a "Web Shield". Is that the same as anti-spyware? As an alternative I could also buy a higher function AV solution like Nod32 or the Avira AntiVir-Premium as a way of filling in the gaps?

All advice on the best approach to fashion a good, not too expensive (or free) roll your own suite that is lightweight would be appreciate. I am not opposed to buying some stuff from some of these vendors as they have to survive as well.

 

Re: Good role your own suite and Avast 4-Home Problem

Doesn't Online Armour have a version that includes an AV? If so why not go with that?

 

Hi, did you put Online Armor into learning mode when installing Avast? Learning mode can be accessed by right-clicking the system tray and choosing Learning mode. If Avast needs a reboot to install, leave Online Armor in learning mode until after the reboot and turn it back off. You might also make sure any Avast entries in the Programs section of OA are trusted.

Avast is usually a very stable program. Did you get it from the Avast site? If you want to try it again, I would make sure it is totally uninstalled first. http://www.avast.com/eng/faq-installation-problems.html The last FAQ is a link to a removal tool.

 

Hopefully you uninstalled Bitdefender before installing avast. Two AVs together may give many blue screens.

Also, I would have installed avast first, let it update, create its system profile/database it does once it's first installed (takes a few hours).

Then after a couple of days install online armor. Too many conflicts while installing new programs together, particularly one (online armor) that could have blocked some parts of the install.

But if Avira is running fine, I'd just keep that. It's about as good as it gets for an AV.

 

For your own security package, I think that Online Armor Paid can perfectly fits one layer, as it has an option including HIPS - Host Intruder Prevention System and demands more knowledge to operate. It's a very good firewall.

For your children, maybe you should use full NOD32, with some sort of web shield. It asks less intervention of the users. Light, stable and functional.

I'm using A-Squared Anti-Malware. It includes AV (Ikarus Engine), Behavior Blocker (Mamutu) and a malware scanner. Already passed by NOD32, Zemana, OA Free, but now I'm binding to Sandboxie, A-Squared Anti-Malware e Comodo Firewall only. Stable, functional and efective.

 

Just learning Online Armor and didn't put it in learning mode, but did OK all the pop-ups. During the install, Avast didn't complain. The uninstall proceeded without problems.

Bitdefender wasn't on the machine in question, it was about to expire on my machine and now I've jumped in and I'm trying some new stuff (and I did uninstall Bitdefender).

I have a feeling what happened is that Avast prompted for registration and went to bring up Firefox. My daughter had Firefox setup to start by bringing up the sites she had open when last used. That site was an on-line game site (miniclips) and I believe either Online Armor or Avast saw that and had some heartburn over that site (I have heartburn over it as well, but for a different reason ). As a result some non-recoverable error got set. I tried to find a way to have it ask to register again, but couldn't get it operational to figure out if that could happen.

So far Avira free - Online Armor free are working well together on the kids computer. I put Online Armor-paid (trial) on my machine with Avira free. It seemed like Online Armor kept bringing up the same popups for the same applications even though I told it to remember stuff. Making those troublesome things "trusted" seems to do the trick. Since the kids computer has a much smaller array of software, maybe Online Armor paid might not be so bad, and then get the HIPS protection as a result.

 

Yes especially because Online Armor paid has an extra feature (compared to free application) is to run UNKNOWN programs as RUN SAFER

At programs tabs options

A) Warn when an unknown programs RUNS = CHOOSE -> NO
B) Select the subchoice = RUN UNKNOWN PROGRAMS as RUN SAFER -> YES

As an extra protection run all internet facing software as RUN SAFER

Now lock OA PAID with a password. They can download, run an install innocent user space programs, without pop-ups. Everything possibly breaching security is silently denied.

Cheers Kees

 

I believe there's a OA tutorial around Wilder's somewhere. I think this is it.https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=189414

 

avast! was my first antivirus program. Worked for me.