“Best” virus scanning program?

The free ones I use are Avast, AntiVir, AVG and Bitdefender. I've got an enterprise copy of Mcafee Desktop Firewall and Viruscan. I've never had any problems with Mcafee like I did at times when I was using Norton and I had Viruses disable my real time protection and program. Haven't had any experience with Nod or Kaspersky but I have read a lot of good reviews for them, so I guess what ever one you get will be a good pick.

 

in my opinion I would highly recommend McAfee enterprise 8i

which is working perfectly for me..
automatic daily scan in the background
very light on system resources
detecting viruses,trojans, spyware,adware,remote tools,dialers,password
crackers,and jokes.
buffer overflow protection
scan and block java scripts and vbscripts from the internet
highly configurable (to control windows dir,system files or dll files..etc)

it works only with win xp or 2000

 

I guess I upset some folks over at the AntiVir BB. If your curious look at some of the post under the english section.

The reason I post here is that I owe Paul an appoligy, once upon a time I argued with him about AntiVir/PE. I should have listened Paul seems to know what he is talking about.

Would like to know thoughts about AVG. I am now using it and it is the easiest to use an maintain that I have tried thus far. I am talking about (FREE) protection programs only.

Thanks

Wildman

 

Hi looolman,

That looks good, but why do we need protection from jokes?
Humour is one of our last saving graces in a technology ridden society.

 

I'm pretty sure he means joke virii

 

AVG is probably good - if you're extremely paranoid. It doesn't update very frequently, which IMO is something of a problem...

 

When you purchase NOD32, do you just download it from the site, or do they send you the CD with the program on it?

 

Once you have the installer downloaded you can back it up to a CD or external hard drive in case you need to reinstall it again though right? And does Kaspersky work the same way?

 

Re: “Best” virus scanning program?

I have the KAV 4.5 installer along with the key burned to a disk and on a USB thumb drive...

 

Re: “Best” virus scanning program?

Originally Posted by Tassie_Devils

"I also thoroughly recommend KAV [I am using KAV 4.5 PRO with *extended* data bases to cover Trojans/spyware/malware, with hourly updating."

illukka
Maybe this is not exactly so...
A friend is using KAV 4.5 with extended bases for three months at a WinXP pro machine with not a single false positive ,that he knows !!!
KAV repeatedly warned him about exploits and spyware from sites and all were at his browser cache and deleted them...
I'm sure he hasn't good surfing habbits as he is constantly downloading
game files,demos,cheats...from everywhere

 

speaking of best AV progs...i've downloaded Avast home edition...but it says i have 6 days trial, does anyone have the registration key for this?

 

One of the best AV's I've found would be mks_vir 2004 it's $29.00 and well worth it. Gets updated at least 5 days a week and so far the support has been great. They are also planning on a major upgrade within the next few weeks. Plus mks_vir 2005 is due out sometime in Dec.

NOD32 seems good from what I can tell. I ran NOD32 beta on my girlfriends PC and it found some goofy trojan that others missed. Next I plan on testing mks_vir on her PC.

avast! Home is a really good free one if you need a free one.
To register avast! Home you'll find that here,avast! Home Registration it's good for I think 14 months and after that you just do it again.

 

You have to register here http://www.avast.com/i_kat_207.php?lang=ENG and they send you the key/registration # by email. Which is good for 18mos. I believe.

HTH

dog -

 

Registration for Home Edition lasts for 14 months. After this period you have to re-register for free again. This way they keep user number statistics in order to keep update servers at optimal performance/reliability level.
Just make sure you download avast! Home Edition and not avast! Professional,since second one will not accept the Home Edition serial...

 

according to a recent testing of pcmag, popular commercial av package for home users are not effective to protect users from not-yet-known-signature-virus/worms/trojans by using its hereutic method detection. Partly, a reason is with year subscription pay required to users which is the scheme they prefer using.
They threw some trojans and most of av could not detect or just one or two. They recommended that home users should not rely on av's hereutic detetion.
.........?

 

FYI in general it's not the best idea to refer to one of the mainstream publications for a reference to the AV market.

 

Re: “Best” virus scanning program?

I like Dr.Web.
To the question of what is the best av,
That all depends on preference and criteria.
Resource usage,update frequency,etc..
I think that there are a lot of good choices and the best way to find out is to try some programs one at a time.

 

I don't think a year subscription plan has anything to do with heuristics in the popular AVs being not as effective, it's just that by being popular, malware writers will test with the most popular AVs first before trying to spread them.

 

Hey thanks guys i'm so used to not really reading online form fill up that i missed to read that they would send the registration key by mail. thanks a lot.

 

I recommend KAV 4.5 NOT 5.0. 5.0 has MAJOR issues and is the worst av I have tried. KAV 4.5 is the best I have ever tried. You will be very sorry if you get 5.0. If you use system restore you cannot currently use 5.0 as it wrecks system restore and causes immediate and severe fragmentation. I had 90 restore points and not a single one worked after I installed KAV 5.0. I was desperate to find a restore poing and I tried every one of them and none worked. I later learned this because of the severe fragmention problem with 5.0 on XP boxes. Be prepared to have to defrag every day or so with 5.0 and defrag will take forever also. Kasperrsky is aware of this issue and this will be fixed but currently if you use system restore you should not install 5.0. Plus, there is the ADS tagging issue. Presently there is no way to say no to the tagging. There will be in the future I think because of the uproar about the tagging. Had I known about the tagging prior to trialing 5.0, I would never have tried it and I do not recommend it to anyone because of the tagging as well as for other reasons. There is still no tool from Kaspersky to remove the tags (which are placed on all your files without your permission) when you uninstall KAV 5.0 if you decide not to keep it. Kaspersky is working on a tool to properly remove 5.0 when you uninstall it but the tool is not ready. Stay away from 5.0 for now.

5.0 also has almost no configurability, no quarantine and is designed solely for the newbie. KAV 4.5 has the most configurability I have seen with an AV which is great. It did not slow my XP Pro box (3GHz with 1024 RAM) set at maximum scanning. NOD32 beta does slow my XP box if I try to use the HTTP scanner. So, you need to trial both NOD32 and KAV, and any others you are interested in, to see how they work on your box with your surfing habits. You can get a full month trial of KAV 4.5. With 5.0 you will only get a two week trial. You should trial the Public Beta of NOD32 not the release version.

http://kasperskylab.co.uk/files/homeuser/kavpers45.exe
http://www.nod32.com/download/downbeta.htm

 

One other consideration. With KAV you get 24 hour, 365 days a year tech support by toll free phone as well as email and they guarantee solution in 24 hours. (Iam not sure what that means as I haven't used it but it sure sounds good). With NOD32 in the USA you do not get phone support and even customer care requires that you pay for a long distance call. Email support can be fast or it can be non existent and many times the initial response to email tech support request is very fast, but further responses take days and issues are not resolved quickly much of the time. I far prefer phone support to email and I loved the phone support Trend Micro has which also is not a long distance call. (I would have kept PC-Cillin just because of the free, excellent phone support except it had one serious bug that didn't affect everyone but affected some of us severely).

I think the issue of tech support is a very important one. I left Symantec over their rapidly deteriorating tech support. I was happy with the product but their tech support went from excellent to pathetic in the course of two years. I have a problem currently with NOD32 beta and I got very rapid initial response but only because I did not go through the "correct" channels. I just directly emailed the tech at Eset who helped me before. I tried his suggestions and replied with my results. I still cannot complete a full scan. Thirtysix hours have gone by since I sent in my reply and I have no response. I don't consider this good tech support. Granted, this is a beta product and thus it will have problems, but the support should be quicker and I am more than happy to go back to the release product however I have one major problem with the release NOD32 for XP and it was because of that problem that tech support gave me an early beta version hoping it would fix my problem. So, given the situation, I think I should get prompt help because it is not a matter of my wanting to try a beta product and then it not working right. Tech support gave me the beta to fix a big problem in the release product.
I'm not implying you will have any problem like this. I am merely using my problem as an illustration of how important it can be to know before you buy the quality of the tech support from the vendor.

 

Thanks for all the info Mele! Defiantly talked me out of KAV 5.0! Can you still download 4.5, or can you only get 5.0 now? And good point about the tech support.

 

Matt_Smi:

You can still download KAV Personal Pro 4.5 from HERE