Is Prevx good?

Hmmmm....Mike got the tray icon spoken for but I will second that motion to get that to stay as it is in P2. It's one of the features I like the most in P2. Just a quick glance to let you know that everything is ok or not.

If P3 has a started programs list like P2 it would be nice to have a way to exclude some programs from being listed....mainly Avira's WSC Helper Tool.

Other than that, what you have described as comiing in P3 seems like it is going to be excellent to work with.

 

Definitely noted. We currently have the GUI reflecting the system status (red/green) but the tray icon doesn't reflect it..... yet

I'm unfamiliar with the WSC Helper Tool. We don't have a 'started programs list' (more of an advanced feature), but would the primary purpose of excluding a program from being listed as a started program be to exclude it from scanning? In that case, you can ignore certain programs/directories from being scanned, but, you probably wouldn't experience much of a performance degradation anyway due to the multiple layers of caching and pre-scanning which take place in realtime in v3 (i.e. - even if a program is executed thousands of times sequentially, there is minimal impact on performance).

 

The WSC helper thing is more of a personal joke than anything. When I open the list to see what has run I see a whole list of "WSC Helper Tool" and nothing else. I think it fires off every few seconds so it overruns the list pretty quick.

 

Ah ok If we do add in output like this, we can definitely add a filter, however, if you want a list of all of the executing programs/changing files, you may want to look at Microsoft's/Sysinternal's free ProcessMonitor which shows a list of everything and includes detailed filtering options.

 

I am talking about the list that is in the "Program Activity" tab of P2 BTW. I should have mentioned that.

 

Yes, I guessed you were Its a relatively simplistic feature to add (as the drivers already collect and process all of the data), but, because there are so many free products which do it already, we probably won't add it into v3 (at least not as a priority feature) to eliminate bloat.

 

About the current P2 icon i agree it's a very smart 1 but yet n forgive me for saying so, the least attractive one of all or at least on the bottom.

However the CSI icon is the best 1 around

The 1 u just mentioned wich is allready designed for P3 should maybe kept n instead if there is a detection/infection u could have it light up, or like the X is for protection off status perhaps another symbol inside the sweetest icon of all could show infection status, just as an example a cross heck idk or even form a coloured border, etc.

 

We have discussed this in the past and I think the icon will end up looking like the CSI icon but with different colored 'sectors' along the right side instead of yellow to reflect the infection status (i.e. - green for clean, red for infected, maybe yellow for 'infections blocked but not cleaned'). The graphic designer will be taking a look at it in the AM and I am DEFINITELY not the right person to make a graphical decision!!

Currently, we show a red X over the CSI icon for a completely disabled status, or an orange X over the CSI icon for "heuristics disabled mode".

 

We have integrated a new set of icons which look quite nice IMO They follow the Green/Amber/Red status of Prevx2 by changing the inside black circle in the CSI icon.

Thanks for the suggestion!

 

I missed much of this thread over the weekend and have only now caught up with it .First I would like to add my thanks for the contribution from PrevxHelp to what has turned out to be a very informative and interesting thread, 15 pages, 358 posts and growing

Now, a couple of questions regarding CSI. I have run CSI since it came out alongside Prevx2. Now I am running CSI v3 I have noticed that there is a delay of an extra 30 secs or so in shutting down after the desktop has closed that wasn't there before. To check if this was due to CSI I uninstalled it (not just shut it down) and the delay in shutting down is gone. Is this due to the new version of CSI carrying out a scan on close down, something like SAS pro does?
I then downloaded and reinstalled the latest copy of CSI which was 3.0.0.136 and the delay is back but it is not now scanning on start up and after a re-boot which the earlier versions did. I have it ticked to scan on bootup but no show
A problem my end or a change in the program?

Ian

 

There was a change in the scan-on-bootup logic which causes it to delay the initial scan for some time to reduce contention on bootup (and contention on the connection in a large company if they are all booting up at the same time). It should still scan within ~1 hour of bootup.

As for on-shutdown, CSI doesn't do anything on shutdown or anything in realtime and as far as I know, we haven't heard anything about a slowdown in shutdown. By any chance, do you have CSI's self protection enabled? That 'could' be one thing which would interfere... but besides that I'm not sure.

And, FWIW, what other security products/OS are you using? If there is some stray incompatibility, we may be able to reproduce it here.

 

Yes, I did have the CSI's self protection enabled, I have now unchecked it and will see if that makes any difference.
I have at the moment DefenseWall installed but noticed the same delay with GeSWall installed. The only other app's I have installed are Returnil which is only used occasionally and NetMeter which I have been using for quite a long time. I have a little time to spare this afternoon so I will see if I can do a process of elimination and come back to you.

Ian

 

Forgot, I am using Windows XP home SP3.

 

That would be great - I suspect it does have something to do with self protection as we actually have to make an exception to allow Windows to shut us down on reboot/shutdown. However, we haven't come across any problems with it for quite some time, but I'll mention it to QA to see what we can come up with

 

Right, a breakdown of what I did:
Uninstalled DefenseWall and Prevx CSI, leaving only Prevx 2 and the Windows firewall.
Time from clicking 'Start' to shutdown in 'clean mode' 14 secs

downloaded a new copy of CSI and installed with default settings: ie. no tray icon, no desktop shortcut, self protection not on.
'Start' to shutdown 32 secs

Enabled tray icon, shortcut and self protection
'Start' to shutdown 32 secs

Uninstalled CSI
'Start to shutdown 14 secs

In all cases the time from when the computer starts to reboot to full usable desktop is 45 secs.

When shutting down the desktop closes and then I get 'Logging off' & 'saving your settings' in quick succession and then 'Windows is shutting down' is the bit where the delay is.
The fact is that this delay is only 18 secs and that dosn't bother me at all, it was just that I didn't see it with the pre v3 Csi and I simply wondered if CSI was doing an extra scan on closing down.
Hope this info is of use

Ian

 

This is very interesting and not what we expected (being that it was slow even when self protection was disabled). We will definitely look into this as there could be a more fundamental interaction issue in Windows taking place.

Thank you for the report!

 

We've reproduced something similar to what you're seeing but aren't sure exactly what it is causing it just yet. Apparently Windows doesn't like how CSI is loaded

We'll get it sorted

 

Glad to help If there is anything else you want me to do or try just let me know.

Ian

 

Thanks - we'll keep you in the loop as we investigate the problem further.

 

Hmm... That makes me wonder, cause if it's delayed in the new version, a user might easily get active with heavy applications. Does P3 sense this and suspend the scan in this case, or did I misunderstand how long it's delayed in the yet to be publically released version?

 

We delay it randomly on bootup, but that's true that we may end up delaying it TOO far past bootup and past other scans on the same network to the point of users starting to work on heavy applications. While the scan is generally fairly light, I think it would definitely be worth checking the CPU usage and delaying the scan until the system is idle.

I'll have it put on the infamous To Do list

 

is there a free full trial to try the software?

 

We haven't officially defined exactly what the trial will consist of, but there is a free trial that has some functionality disabled but you will be able to observe the functionality as it would be in the full version.

Sorry to be vague... but I don't want to say something incorrect and then be quoted on it In my opinion, the current way our trial is structured is more user-friendly than other products, but I'll let you all know exactly what the specifications are on the trial as soon as we start it.

 

thanks

 

ok, we are now at 15 pages. What I want to know is, are we looking at the first of the year for the beta, December, November? Come on now, there has to be some realistic release date for your beta.