av programs

How many antivirus programs can be run on the same pc / laptop ?

 

I guess ONE is the correct answer

 

I personally would not recommend running more than one resident AV. It can lead to all sorts of trouble, and this is coming from experience. So many times people complain "X is blocking my internet access, why?" or "My PC keeps BSOD'ing" and it emerges they have two or more antivirus applications installed simutaneously.

 

I have four installed on my machine right now for testing purposes, but using more than one antivirus is basically a game of Russian roulette because sooner or later one of those combinations is going to blow up in your face. Stick to just one.

 

Real Time: Just one AV, one AS, one FW, etc.
On-Demand: as many as you want

 

I would look at multi-engine AV's if you feel the need for more protection/detection. Such as F-secure, Trustport, & G-Data. You can also run any AV as resident and one for on demand only as well.
Good luck!!

 

Thank you all for the replies

 

Yeah, but multi-engines can conflict each others detection can't they?

 

I guess... However, any av product conflicts with something--per their forums.
That being said I would rather chance a supported multi-engine av than running two separate products!

 

Sure, but if you look at avira, Dr they are all one engined but are still honorubly good, arn't they?

 

Never said one was better than the other; However, they can and often times do have higher detection rates due to several vendors signatures in one product. A lot of times we are driven by our insecurities to pursue more/better security, and multi-engine av's give some that warm fuzzy feeling----been there done that!! GOT OVER IT!! LOL..

 

Nope, because there's only one set of drivers.

 

Yeah, generally, I also like multi-engined ones more then single ones.
I mean, if you look at trustport, F-secure and others..... Whoosh! They catch nearly all!

 

Indeed....

 

Personally I reccomend having 1 antivirus, the one you think is the best, with all protection on. Then you can have as many on demand anti spywares, anti rootkits and firewalls(if you don't have a security suite). Also be careful with anti spywares, they can conflict too. I once had a conflict like that, and my system wouldn't recognize it's internal laptop modem. Then a format is needed.

Also watch out from having antiviruses on demand, because some very incompatible antiviruses (such as Symantec, or Kaspersky) can conflict also in these way, because of the drivers, while there are some which do not have those problems at all (NOD32, for example).

 

I wouldn't say Whoosh as that implies speed and multi engined Avs have been heavy, at least in the past.

 

Not anymore, Hammer.
GData 2008 is a fine example of a fast two-engine av scanner.

 

Yes, when I tried it, it was a lot lighter than I expected.

 

Thank you for updating me. Thanks also to Macstorm.

 

And with some multi engine antivirus products like TrustPort you can decide which engines you want to use for On-Access (always running in the background) and which engines for On-Demand (running only manual/planned scan tasks).

So i use TrustPort with 2 On-Access engines (enough to earn a Virusbtn award with it) and little performance impact, and 5 (yes FIVE) for On-Demand
(full scan with taskplanner)

In our testlab we have a system with 8 AV engines running it is a,
2 GB ram duocore E2160 one of the cheapest models you can buy today.
You don't know if they are running or not..

But i wouldn't do that on a 5 year old system

 

And sometimes, even 5 is not enough, in some cases the risk of data getting corrupted or infected is nothing comparing to the price of some extra AV's.

A company of a friend of my uses TrustPort Gateway (all Internet data goes thru 5 antivirus engines) and then they have a 2-engine AV on their computers.

And some really hates to gate his computers infected ...
(especially with some kids playing games on it, and needing these computers for school).
At home this friend has 5 computers, one of them is a old XP system which his wife uses and is also used as a WebFilter and 5 engines Antivirus Gateway.

On the all pc's are running the 2-engine AV,
he doesn't like to have his systems infected, which safes him a lot of time.

 

According to Av-comparatives, Trusport has a large number of false positives.

Dr. Web, AVG , Ewido and Norman

Lol, I don't like any of it's engines. Only Dr.Web is a bit good, and Ewido are good at finding some trojans and spyware.

 

Running only one AV is much more practical,I think.