Low overhead AV

I am working on an old AMD 900 machine with 128 MB Ram. I just installed McAfee AV/Firewall V7 (since it is an older program, I figured it would suit the machine better), and the RAM dwindles down to 0.

Are there any lower overhead alternatives? E-Trust claims low drain, anyone have any experience with that? One problem is that the machine will be used by someone who is not real computer savy so whatever I put on there has to be pretty simple to use and update itself with no intervention!

 

E-Trust, Command, and NOD32 are light on resources. 128MB will be okay with W9.x/WME if you only AUTO LOAD the antivirus and firewall programs. W2K and WXP require at least 256MB.

An expert PC user could tweak W2K/WXP to run okay with 128MB, but the system will be very slow with most tasks.

Changing AV won't help much. You need to bump up the RAM to 256MB. I think you're asking for trouble if you let a neophyte use your PC. You should, at minimum, show this person the basics of safe browsing.

 

Just a couple quick clarifications - The machine is running Windows ME, and it is not my machine - I have spent the last week cleaning every trojan, malware, hijacker, dialer, etc you can think of off the machine that had a filesharing program and a braodband connection but no AV or Firewall!

Anyway the goal is to put something easy to use that won't drain the resouces before I give it back to them - I have an extra 64 MB module that I may throw in there to help out.

I have never used NOD32 - my impression is that it is for the more advanced user - is this true? Also, does it update automatically. My experience with free software is that while they can be as good as commercial products, there is some onus on the user to check for updates - they won't happen automatically.

 

I would backup important data, wipe the drive, and reload windows. W9.x/WME degrades over time, just from removing/reloading software.

Adding FW and AV won't keep those craps from the PC because we're dealing with an un-informed PC user.

You can save system resources by launching ONLY the AV and FW during boot. A clean reboot should yield at least 80% free resources and 70MB of free RAM.

Avast Home (free) has a very robust AUTO update subroutine. The same with NOD32. You can tweak NOD to achieve a higher level of security. NOD's as-loaded config also works well.

Have encountered some update issues with the E-Trust software. I would stick with McAfee 7, reload windows, and add more RAM.

Teach the user some common sense instead of relying too much on software to protect the PC.

 

Don't forget F-Prot. I think it uses less memory than any other AV around. The interface for NOD32 is on the geekish side, but the default settings tend towards low resource usage, and less than its full capacity for protection.

 

Don't forget to try the AntiVir Personal Edition.
It's free, very good detection and have low resources...

 

True, but the virus updater section stinks.

 

True, but is one more option...

 

No not at all, I have created a thread here that gives you options to “Tweak” up Nod32 should you so desire, and most of us once aware seem to so choose.

Hope this helps…

Cheers

 

NOD32 isn't hard to configure. It doesn't work best out of the box (at least not for me),but its quiet easy to find features. Interface is also well organized and simple to use.

 

I run WinME, too. When I trialed NOD32 a while back, it was *as advertised* -- low impact on RAM & CPU cycles.

However, with WinME (& ALL Win9X machines) there is another limitation. You can view this by holding down the Windows button while hitting the "Pause Break" key. Doing so will produce "System Properties" window. On that window, click on the "Performance" tab. On that tab, notice the entry for "System Resources." That entry is a percentage. If it gets close to or under 50%, WinME can become unstable. When that happens, a BSOD or lock-up can be triggered rather easily.

After boot-up, with my *usual* programs running & DrWeb as my AV, system resources are 89%. In the exact same situation, but with NOD32 running instead of DrWeb, my system resources dropped to 74%.

That wouldn't be too bad for many folks, but I work on a number of websites. That task involves simultaneous use of several fairly heavy programs. At those times, my system resources drop to around 59% with DrWeb as AV. At such times, NOD's extra 15% hit could cause a lock-up or worse.

Of course this is not a factor on Win2K or XP machines. Those Operating Systems manage GUI ram-usage-release, & other factors which impact system resources, in a far more efficient way than Win9X systems. (I'm getting a hot-computer with XP for Christmas.)

By the way, adding extra RAM will do NOTHING to improve system resource availability on Win9X machines. That availability is fixed by the OS & adding RAM won't increase it.

 

The root cause of your problem is that some of your applications don't play well in a "team environment". Resources is there for the OS to use. I have a W98SE partition. Rock solid performance even when system resources dips below 20%. Poorly coded software can leak resources and often do not release the resources upon closing.

That said, W9.x/WME don't like to manage more than 384MB of RAM.

 

That's interesting to know because when I added a 64 meg chip to try to help out, the meter eventually STILL went down below 5 MB! I am using FreeRam XP to monitor/manage the ram. I feel like the engineer in Apollo 13 trying to decrease the AMPS !!!

Think I may try Avast/ZA 4.5 instead of McAfee 7 and see if that is any better.

 

Check for baddies and leaky programs. W9.x/WME shouldn't pull more than 190MB during normal operation. It's probably time to wipe the HD and reload WME.

 

@nod32_9

No argument with what you said. But these applications (many of them vintage 1995 or 1996) *know* what I want to do even before I do.

@ajcstr

Avast might be okay. It's a tad heavier than AntiVir-PE. AVPE updates daily, has good heuristics, & has a very small footprint.

The latest version of F-prot is NOT so light any more.

Among the non-free AVs, DrWeb is REALLY light, updates incrementally every day, & is a very good AV.

As for ZA, if you want to try that FW be sure you use Total Uninstall when you install it. Otherwise, trying to uninstall ZA {in case you don't like it} can be a nightmare. It's like garlic -- everytime you think it's finally gone, BURP! -- there it is again. And if even a shred of ZA remains, it will screw up other FWs royally.

 

Does anyone know where I can purchase Dr. Web in U.S. dollars? The website only shows EUR.

Thanks,

Vince

 

From http://www.dials.ru/english/ .


tECHNODROME

 

Thanks Technodrome!

 

You can also get DRW HERE for $29 US dollars.

 

escan is also pretty low even though it uses the KAV engine