mks_vir BECOMES ArcaVir

Here is a screenshot of the beta of ArcaVir 2005 and I must say that I am really impressed with it. A registry monitor as been added to the program and I have not tested this yet to comment. I have about 600 viren in my collection to test with. I'll post back on the scan results.

 

Nailed every one of them, which NOD32 and KAV5 also catch.

 

I dl'ed today and installed. It went very smooth and I am impressed with it also.
Have not done any testing but I am already using MKS 2004. I did not activate the firewall which is included also, so I cannot comment on that.
All in All it appears so far to have been worth the wait.

 

Where can get this Product ?

 

Firewall?
I do have a firewall included in mine. LOL I am going to dl it again to make sure it wasn't added after I got my email from them.

mks_vir is all that is available to the public, sorry. You can get this in roughly 2 weeks when it becomes final.

 

LMAO Just got an email from support telling me to right click my tray icon to get access to the firewall. I was so into the program and its new features I had not looked there. Talking about fast support, I got an answer before I could get the email typed.

 

Hey Eliot,

How is the resource usage compared to 2004?

 

www.stormbyte.com in about two weeks.

 

Sorry for not pointing that out, I misread and thought you had found it, is kinda hidden, it took me a while to find it.

I forgot to check the resource usage but I installed it on a comp for testing with a lower proc (1.3GH) than my main box and it was still very robust almost unnoticeable.

 

About 50MB is what I see on the services. It has almost no impact on the system that I can tell. I have the heuristics on FFB too. (full friggin blast)

 

Registry monitor is a nice addition. Seems to be running pretty good so far.

 

How does that compare with 2004?

 

Oops. I should have said it runs the same or tad faster. I think the 50MB is pretty much the same too. I would like to say that I ran a full scan just prior to looking at it.

 

Are there any other changes under the hood, besides the firewall and Regmonitor? Is it the same scanning engine as 2004? BTW the help file needs translation

 

I'd agree that the RAM footprint i roughly that of the 2004 version. Not a major chnage there.

My curiousity raised (isn't it always) I grabbed a copy since I do have an active license. This is definitely a major update. In mks_vir 2004 I was plagued with some issue that resulted in a spontaneous reboot soon after logging on. I came up with some not too satisfactory ways to avoid the problem, but we could never seem to really solve it - note I also seemed to be the only user suffering this. Well, it appears to be solved in the beta version. Smoother operation than 2004 all around.

Speed is still excellent. I also did a few quick use challenge tests (trojans dropped during surfing) identical to those mentioned here. In this completely non-representative sampling, ArcaVir is holding it's own with KAV, which I find impressive.

The user interface is very similar to 2004, but is developing cleaner lines and better aesthetics.

My overall impression is very favorable thus far.

Blue

 

Therefore, not ideal for the more 'mature' computer!

 

Generally I'd say yes. This is about the same RAM usage that I'm seeing with KAV 5.0 WS. On the high end among the AV's I've tested. However, if you look at CPU utilization, it looks rather benign, which reinforces the other casual impression of having minimal impact on system responsiveness. One other thing, as with the previous version, it is very easy to work with a full system scan in progress - very little in the way of system delay to the console activity.

If I had an older, RAM and CPU light PC, my guess is that some of the classic lighter AV solutions would be more appropriate although I can't test that directly myself.

Blue

 

A couple of other comments:

As NAMOR points out above, the help file needs some help. Looking into it in a little more detail, the main help document is a pdf file. There are two listed to account for the main languages covered (arcavir_en.pdf and arcavir_pl.pdf). Right now, despite the name difference, they seem to be the same file. I assume the translation hasn't made it to the beta release.

The firewall, which Eliot notes is controlled by a right click to the menu from the system tray icon, is a separate application (firewall.exe). I've not taken a look at it yet.

Blue

 

http://stormbyte.com/forums/viewtopic.php?topic=57
An unflattering discussion about mks_vir. Comments?
[I haven't used mks_vir yet, but by the looks of things here, i may just put it on my "trial before system format" list.]

 

no13,

Looks like a standard false positive issue to me. Resolved within a few days. Not unlike any of the other AV products with reasonably aggressive heuristic approaches.

Blue

 

That is correct. But new translation will be there soon

 

Those issues have been resolved in MKS 2004 and the DVDshrink.exe FP seems to have been fixed in 2005.

 

In my opinion, the ArcaVir is a great AV, but I don't like the pictures in the GUI. They seems dirty and very little defined...
Maybe is a like of the developers...

 

These are JPEG artifacts. Image is compressed terribly bad.

 

More screenshots:
http://stormbyte.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=60