Vipre Anti-virus

Has anyone tried this anti-virus software yet? I'm interested in good & bad experiences.

The Vipre website & forums suggest that it plays badly with other security software. Can anyone confirm this?

http://www.vipreantivirus.com/

 

How about this?
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=235634

 

Thanks, I saw that thread in my search. However, apart fro the post from the OP, there's no actual experiences in there. Just stuff about pricing, firewalls & avatars.

 

Take a closer read. Users do post their experience with this AV in that thread.

Some more threads here and here and here .

Amazon reviews are sometimes not the best but they generally have some good, accurate observations. The long initial install for example is a pain even on a fast connection.

IME, it is a very lightweight AV which is IMHO, expensive compared to most other AVs, particularly since it has only been up and running for just over a year ( signature database will therefore be relatively on the low side ) and its detection rate is still a bit of an unknown quality.

But an AV well worth keeping an eye on.

 

True, Vipre is new but the Sunbelt Malware Research Center has been a round a while:

http://www.sunbeltsecurity.com/Default.aspx

Unless you are comparing it to free av's, I don't understand your statement that $29 USD is expensive compared to others.

 

Don't forget we Brits generally have a poor deal with software.

Now if Vipre was $29, this would convert to a more reasonable £19.

Here in the UK with Value Added Tax added on, the price is listed in GBP as £29.95 which converts to over $45 which I consider expensive for any commercial AV, particularly a relatively new one.

 

I have tried the product, and found it to be slower than my current McAfee software when browsing the internet !

(Windows XP Home Edition 512 MB RAM)

Speed (browsing) was comparable to some other AVs I've tested, but I've found VIPRE to be a bit slower than average.

And then there is the incredibly slow daily definitions update - at what, 115 kbps ?

 

I tried it three days ago. Installed fine but was inoperable after installation because it would never connect for an update. Eaz-Fix had it gone it just a few minutes.

 

I just thought I'd take a moment to comment on some of the issues mentioned in this thread.

Our threat database is actually quite large. Because of a deal we had made while VIPRE was still in development we actually started with another company's database (not really sure I'm allowed to say who's) in addition to our own. Because of this we had started with the database of one of the better programs out there with the addition of our own database.

We've done a lot of comparative testing internally and I know we're very near the top of the list. I've personally been looking into public comparative testing and I believe we'll be included in one of the next rounds of testing on several sites.

Unfortunately, not much can be done about the pricing on our website for countries other than the USA because of taxing issues. I can say that you can find other places to purchase keys such as resellers which may be a better option for some.

Fly, you should definitely see a performance increase when switching from McAfee to VIPRE. It's hard to say why you might have seen slower browsing speed with VIPRE. VIPRE shouldn't be monitoring your internet connection at all as it's not a firewall. It is possible there could have been a conflict on your system with other security software or remnants of a previous software that didn't uninstall correctly. You may also want to try disabling any add-ons for your browser to see if there may have been a conflict there.

The update speed can be a bit slower when there is a lot of traffic on our servers. After the initial definitions installation which at the moment is about 115 mbs at the moment, the definitions updates are much smaller. Usually each update is only around 100k so 115 kbps speed is really not an issue.

If for some reason you are having trouble installing the first definitions update or just want a faster download you can manually install the latest definitions from this website:

http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Home-Home-Office/VIPRE/Definitions/

 

You could pay the VAT like agnitum does for their products in the EU
http://www.agnitum.com/news/agnitumnewsletter/
ellison

 

Interesting and not uncommon.

Looking forward to the results.

 

(partial quote above)
McAfee VirusscanPlus can be a resource hog at startup or when updating. But for ordinary browsing it's not such a resource hog since I removed the SiteAdvisor. Browsing websites (IE 7) is very fast, almost as fast as browsing without security software ! (AMD Athlon XP 2800+ 512 MB RAM Windows XP Home Edition service pack 2 plus essential updates)
I have my reasons for not renewing it, but that's outside the scope of this thread.

I trialled VIPRE (not the very latest version) on a clean image. That is, one I had made BEFORE installing ANY security software. (I used Microsoft updates before installing VIPRE). No other security software was present, Windows XP firewall turned on. Later I added your firewall (not the latest version), and that one was a real resource hog.
Btw, no add-ons, except an older version of Flash, were present.

About that update thing: is it still the way it was with Counterspy 2.5, meaning that if you had not updated for X days you need to do a full definitions update ? That's not a trivial issue, I've had time-outs with Counterspy 2.5 !

 

I dont use them personally, but I'm at the Microsoft TechEd conference right now, and their sales guy at their booth has one hell of a good presentation on the enterprise. Picture an older version of the guy who sells OxyClean

 

I'm going to guess it was a company bought up earlier by Microsoft.

 

I used Vipre and it was great for awhile. However, I started having download issues with the definition updates. A couple times they froze and I had to re-install the program.
I believe in time, this will be a great antivirus program. The company has been around for some time and their support team is great.

 

For what it is worth and I am by no means an expert but I have used Vipre since it came out. I have tried other AV's on my laptop but always kept Vipre on my desktop. I switched to Vipre on my laptop now and it is great. I have never had any problems with it until I tried to use Prevx Edge (the rootkit scans were conflicting, simply fixed by turning off the rootkit scan in Vipre). I like it and have no intentions of switching. It runs light, is effective and I have never had an infection since using it. Support is great also. I have had others switch to it also. I have currently use Vipre, OA paid, Secunia PSI, Prevx Edge.

 

As far as the firewall being a resource hog, the only reason I know of that would cause the firewall to use a lot of resources would be if you have a lot of connections opening on the system. Something like P2P software could cause this. This can be resolved by disabling the "Resolve address" option on the Connections section of the firewall. With this turned off you should never see any resource problems with the firewall.

The updates do still work the same as they had in CounterSpy 2.5. Basically the definitions will need to be completely refreshed if the definitions are 6 updates behind.

We're currently looking into different options for updates as we do know this can be an issue for some people, especially those on slower connections such as dialup. I believe updates will work differently in version 4 of VIPRE which is not too far away. Unfortunately, I can't say for sure that updates will be done differently or how they might work as this is still in development and we are testing different solutions.

 

(partial quote above)

I do and did not use any P2P or torrent software. The experience with the firewall was (I think) the one before the latest version.

The latest version's speed is more acceptable.

 

Thanks very much for your replies. The response started off badly, so I had stopped checking this thread for a few days. I appreciate Nick from Sunbelt's contribution to the thread.

The effect of Vipre with Prevx was interesting. I'm starting to see Prevx as my main security product but am not ready to drop a regular AV product. Nod32 for me & my customers has been causing too many issues & I am looking at Vipre as a light AV product which must run alongside Prevx. The rootkit detection conflict mentioned by fasteddy2020 was very useful tip for me & I'd appreciate any clarification from Sunbelt about running Vipre alongside other security software.

These days, with attacks like XP Antivirus 2009, I believe that a dual level security setup is essential for the regular user.

 

It's definitely a good idea to run more than one security software on a system as no security software is going to be able to detect and remove all threats. There are a few things you would want to be careful about with this though.

Usually you wouldn't want to have more than one active or real-time protection running as this can cause conflicts and slowdowns. If you did want to use another real-time protection alongside VIPRE it's suggested that you disable the "Check files when they are opened or copied" option in the Active Protection settings. Disabling this option has VIPRE's Active Protection only scan files that are being executed instead of scanning any file that's accessed on the system in any way.

It's definitely not suggested to run another anti-virus alongside VIPRE as this can cause unexpected behavior on the system and often ends up actually making your system less secure.

As you've already found out, if you have another software with rootkit detection it can cause problems with VIPRE's rootkit detection. You may need to disable VIPRE's rootkit detection in cases such as this.

If you have any further questions feel free to ask.

 

NickHSunbelt, are you considering to upgrade trial from 15 to 30 days?

 

You can also see some of the issues others had with it in this thread here:
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=235634

My issues start at post #75 on the bottom of page #3:
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=235634&page=3

There also seems to be a dedicated support forum now so that may be a spot to check also.
http://supportforums.sunbeltsoftware.com/categories.aspx?catid=23&entercat=y

 

Joe from Prevx has stated in another thread:

"We are working on a new behavioral monitoring engine which will hopefully get around the difficulties with Vipre, but this is still a few weeks away. In the meantime you may want to disable the Vipre rootkit scanning as Prevx 3.0 will protect you from rootkits (and detect them on demand)."

Outside of this, what I consider a minor problem, have no problem with running Vipre and OA paid and feel completely protected. You should give it a try. I am going wait until Prevx has the monitoring update and give it a try again. If it doesn't work, I have several other computers I can use my Prevx licenses on.

 

Yes, we have our new support forum which is a great place to get support. We also offer free support by email, phone, and live chat available on our website.

As for your issue with the updates freezing the system, VIPRE updates through Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer is used to update simply because it's always going to be on every system. It's possible the issue may actually be with Internet Explorer. I'd suggest first seeing if you have issues using Internet Explorer on the system and try disabling any unnecessary add-ons. It could also be an issue caused by conflicting security software on the system. To get a better idea of what could be causing this problem on your system it'd be best to have one of our techs take a look at your system information to look for possible conflicts.

The most common issue I see with update problems such as this happens when someone has previously had Norton or Symantec installed on the system. When uninstalled normally through the Control Panel it will leave a lot of traces on the system which cause issues with VIPRE. It's always suggested that when you remove Norton that you run the Norton Removal Tool to remove most of the traces left behind from the normal uninstall before installing VIPRE.

 

What if you've already uninstalled Norton using the control panel method? Will doing this make someone's computer incompatible with Vipre?