[help] Light and fast AV

I am new to the forums and need some advice. I have been reading the forums for the past couple of days, but I would like some info from people who have more experience and/or knowledge in this field. The more I read the more I get lost in confusion about actual performance. Currently I am using NAV 2002 at home. It appears to be a system resource hog and takes around 50 - 60 minutes (sometimes longer) to perform weekly scans on my computers. It has also failed on a couple of viruses. Any suggestions for an AV that is lighter on resources and performs quicker? Thanks in advance for responses.

 

NOD32. I just tried the trial version, and it amazes me. Very light on resources, and scans take all of 3 minutes. Light on HD space too. And if you go to the Virus Bulletin website and search the site for it, you'll discover that it has the highest score there of any AV - 23 successes, only 3 failures. (Norton has 23 successes, 6 failures. The worst I've found is AntiVir Personal, a free AV that failed 8 out of 9 times. You get what you pay for. )

But don't take my word on this stuff - I'm fairly n00blar here.

 

Welcolm esortm,

It would have helped if you had specified your computer set-up, particularly if you have a relatively older computer. Most AV's for example will run without causing many slowdown problems on a new box.

Take a look at some of these AV's mentioned here;

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=28952

Of those listed,those AV's which standout as they are both lightweight and scan quickly include NOD, Command AV (CSAV) and F-prot for Windows.

But do not forget that the scan speed is probably a reflection of a poor unpacking engine. For example Kaspersky has a relatively slow scanner speed but this is because of its excellent unpacking engine.

Make sure you remove all of NAV before you try another AV as conflicts have been reported with the remnants of Norton left after an uninstall. Take a look here;

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/nav.nsf/docid/2001061911223206

Trial say NOD, CSAV or F-Prot for Windows and decide which one suits you and your system. All are very good Virus detectors.

 

welcome to the forum Esortm,

if you're looking for light weight AVs which are also good then go for these products:

1. F-Prot v3.14e
2. KAV Personal v5.0.121
3. NOD32 v2

F-Prot is the lightest with very good detection rate and a powerful scanning engine. KAV is kinda heavier than F-Prot but its still very light and with the best detection rate. well NOD32 has excellent "In The Wild" detection rate and the best stability but it misses a lot of uncommon viruses. i suggest you individually try out those products and decide.

 

Do you want lightweight only, or do you want some protection? Because NOD32 won't offer you any better protection than Norton for the most part, but its much lighter and faster.

Look at realistic websites as well, Virus bulletin is fine, if all you care about is viruses, but Trojans and Malware are much more common in my experiance, so i'd be leaning towards a product that takes care of both excessively well, so you don't end up being FORCED to buy a secondary solution and spending more money.. Everyone talks up the VB stuff, but its really only 50% of what you should be considering - despite what most people will tell you.

I'd say:

1) eXpendia AVK - its INCREDIBLY light on ram and resources, using less than 8,000k of ram, and no noticable process dragging on most systems I tried it on. Scanning is quite fast depending on your settings, and it gives you the added benefit of 2 engines (KAV and RAV) for superb layered security. Only $29.00, and you can turn on and off various engines and combinations to tweak it for any system (ive run it on a 500mhz box, and a 3.4ghz box, and it works great!).
http://www.extendiaavk.com/

2) KAV5.0 Personal - much lighter than 4.5 on systems, and still offers the superb KAV databases and heuristics everyone loves. Rather expensive at $50 though, but very thorough nonetheless. (considering AVK uses the SAME engine and database and has a secondary engine/database, i'd say check #1 out first. )
http://www.kaspersky.com/

3) F-Prot v3.14e - scores great, and is very light.
http://www.f-prot.com/

http://www.claymania.com/tests-trojan.html
(to see the anti-trojan powers of KAV, AVK and F-Prot)

http://www.virusbtn.com/magazine/archives/200306/comparatives/gdata.xml
AVK=ItW Overall - 100.00%, ItW Overall (o/a) - 100.00%, ItW File - 100.00%,Macro - 100.00%,Standard - 100.00%,Polymorphic - 99.92%

Generally, anythign with the KAV engine/database is your best bet in my opinion.

 

Kobra, my guess is that eXtendia and GDATA don't have the 5.0 engine.

 

good point Tazdevl and your guess is true. also i want to point out that the malicious codes we encounter depends on our surfing habits. if you download only from good sites, if you apply the latest OS patches, if you are not CLICK-HAPPY with your mouse then you are better off with a free AV. but still a good AV offers us good protection. most of us follow that rule. but if we are interested in all those FREEWAREs we find everywhere now-a-days we should be careful and checkout the site and source before doing anything. thats why i don't think Trojans or other such malwares are much of a threat. if for some reason you are blasted with trojans and backdoors then investing on a good AT seems a good idea. otherwise a good AV gives us enough protection.

 

I do believe your right, AVK seems to use the 4.5 engine, which might be a good thing, because KAV5 lost the realtime onaccess archive scanning capability. Which makes me like the 4.5 engine better, it seems stronger.

I emailed them about the lack of onaccess archive scanning in KAV5, with no option to even turn this on, and got back this reply:

----------------------------
Dear Sir/Madam,

You are absolutely right - in KAV5 the Monitor does not check archives for viruses (you can find this information in Users guide). Version 4.5 does check this though as you indicate.

Sincerely yours,
Artem Petukhov
____________________________________________
Technical support /Kaspersky Lab Ltd

... I'll take 4.5 backed up with RAV 12 any day of the week at this point. The move towards speed at the cost of some depth in security is something i'm not excited about - especially after my fiascos with NOD32.

 

Another reason to wait for Personal Pro (I think Workstation also allows you to control what get's scanned, and what doesn't to a greater extent).

 

etrust! Super light and good detection.

 

The missing "archive scan" does not constitute a significant security risk. This is because the virus contained in an archive must be extracted from the archive before it can be executed. And then (after the extraction and before the execution) it will be caught by KAV.

If you believe that KAV 4.5 is safer than KAV 5 ... please try the following:

Download the EICAR test virus file from http://www.eicar.org/anti_virus_test_file.htm . Thereafter, install one of the Asian character sets (chinese, cyrillic etc.) which are on your Windows CD. Then rename the filename of the EICAR test file. For example, call it ыаываEICAR.com. Scan this renamed file with KAV 4.5 and KAV 5. You will see the difference ... ;-)

(Note: The EICAR test virus will not "run" any longer after it has been renamed. However, there are trojans which will run after the renaming procedure.)

 

Thanks to everyone for the quick responses and leads to programs for further investigation.

 

Yep I agree 100% Etrust EZ Antivirus Version 6.2.0.28

 

For those and others who apologize for eTrust, can tell me how works eTrust EZ Armor (firewall + AV)? I´m very interested in it.
Is it posible to put the AV as on-demand?
TIA,

backfolder.-

 

Yes you can. The firewall is ZoneAlarm. So you can either get it from CA or buy the ZoneAlarm 5.0 Security Suite. Both are the same product. I don't think we've seen any recent tests of the most current version of AZ Armor.

 

Ups! previous versions of ZA doesn´t work well in my PC. The process vsmon.exe can´t stop growing and growing, and the worst thing was a BSOD. So I´ve uninstalled and the problem was gonne.
I don´t want to install it anymore, but maybe give a try to eTrust AV.
Thanks!

backfolder.-

 

He's asking for lightweight here, people. In no way would I ever consider KAV 5 to be lightweight, it may consume less memory than 4.5, but slows a modern system down quite noticeably, and still isn't that modest in its memory consumption.

When you do check how much memory a program is using, you also need the VM size option ticked in the Windows Task Manager processes monitor. Most people don't do this.

Anyway, for light and fast, I would say:

1. F-Prot - excellent protection, as lightweight as a modern AV gets
2. AVG 6 (Free) - protection maybe not so great, but still light (and free)
3. Dr. Web - great protection, very fast, memory usage usually quite low

I've heard EZ Antivirus can be considered lightweight, though once you throw in their firewall, memory usage gets a little high.

NOD32 is medium weight. Fast scanning, low CPU usage, but its entire memory footprint (right now, on my system, without IMON) is 24MB, so if you're installing on an older machine with little memory, it's probably going to slow things down.

KAV 5 is in the heavyweight class. Can't remember exactly what memory usage was like, but I think the total was about 30MB+? It really uses some CPU power, too. It's also the most comprehensive protection out there. If you want to use KAV on a weak system, check out the Swiss 3.5 version.

 

My NOD32 right now is at:

- NOD32krn.exe --- 696 KB
- NOD32kui.exe --- 656 KB

What is really low, maybe the lowest I´ve tried. Sometimes it grows, it depends on the PC activity, and when starting system obviously.
KAV5, is quite higher, but when it´s quite calm it´s also really low, no than NOD32 but low. In the firewall field I recomend the last Outpost Firewall version, check and try the trial version. But maybe there´s other lighter.

I´m using AMD Athlon 1Ghz, 512 Mb Ram, 2 HD IBM, Nvidia graphics FX 5200.

backfolder.-

 

Way off base. During scans 14-18MB, idle and surfing about 8-10MB for both both processes. I suggest you download the trial and play around with it, rather than posting info that you've read somewhere else.

You are right, KAV 5.0 is not a lightweight AV. However, it isn't the porker you refer to nor does it "slow a modern system down quite noticeably". I'd say based on the numbers I'm looking at, memory consumption is running right in the middle of all the AVs I've tested. Especially when compared to F-Secure and Norton.

As others have said, NOD/FProt are probably some of the lightest.

 

Yes, done that, the only one I haven't actually used is EZ Av, which is why I said "I heard..." for that one. The rest of the information isn't second hand.
Compared to Backfolder's numbers, my Nod32 memory usage is astronomical, so maybe my system configurations are just different... Are you sure you're adding VM usage, though?

In that quote, I'm mostly referring to start up time, IE start up, and browser page loads. I'm definitely not the only one who has noticed this, check dslreports' forum (or, IIRC, this forum) if you'd like to hear it from others.
In contrast to Nod, which rarely feels much different from having no AV at all, KAV 5 is quite noticeable.
By noticeable I don't mean intolerable
And I don't mean to imply that it is a porker, just that it's not light, and on my install, not medium either...

I actually really like KAV 5, I just think it's the wrong thing to recommend when someone asks for light & fast.

 

Totally agree with you. Looking at VM BTW. Based on all my testing, KAV 5.0 is in the middle of the pack in terms of resources.

Info on DSLReports is a mixed bag when you really dig into it. Some folks are problaby running 98/ME, expecting decent support from devs on an unsupported OS is asking a bit much. I also wonder how many people that had problems actually removed reg keys and dlls from their previous AV, not to mention some may be running into OS issues (98/ME) as well as having an older rig. Not trying to be a KAV advocate, just providing my experiences.