mks_vir 2004

Anybody checking mks_vir 2004 out since the trial and registered versions are supposed to be the same? Seems like a good program. How do you think it compares to NOD and KAV or other AV you may be using?

 

I registered MKS_Vir 2004 this week.

I entered the registration code in the trial version and it worked.
No need to download again.

 

Tester, what are your thoughts so far? Which AV did you replace and why did you choose mks? I've been testing quite a few AVs lately and keep coming back to this one.

 

Hi jon.

I registered MKS to replace Dr.Web as my primary av program.
I took a look at this antivirus when Dr. Web was transitioning to the new version.
I kept Dr.Web as a second on-demand scanner.

My thoughts on MKS?
The only issue that may be a problem for some users is the resource usage if you have an older computer with low RAM.I have 512mb and a fairly new tower.I haven't had any problems with that.

I liked the support right away.
I like the way the mail scanner works.
The configuration options are nice.
Heuristics.I want that in an av program.
The scanner seems to me to be thorough.That component doesn't use as much resources as I expected.
The details available about the updates are another little feature that I appreciate.
My trial of MKS was smooth and trouble-free.
Overall I really like it.

 

Hello,
I am now using MKS as my primary scanner and love it, I replaced Extendia AVK as it was aload on my box with both RAV&KAV engines running. Since installing MKS it is like I upgraded my processor.
Pay attention to what the Tester says above about older machines being slowed, it could be an issue.
And I agree with all the notes he listed above.
I am very pleased and there is a forum at stormbyte.com.
They really seem to be working hard at making this an excellent AV.
MKS_vir 2005 will be out in a few months I believe and current 2004 liscenced users will update for free, but you may want to check on this at stormbyte.

 

Have either of you run any virus tests on mks?

 

I think it has great potential but currently the support sucks. I was never able to get the trial to update and support kept insisting the problem was my Proxomitron at first...which I knew it wasn't. Then they installed Proxo and had no problem updating so it wasn't Proxo although originally support demanded that I stop using Proxo! Can you imagine asking that?! The one most importtant application I use is Proxomitron! I would give up any av very fast before I would give up Proxo.

Anyhow, support just stopped trying to fix my update problem. I had mks for two weeks and never could update it. Yeah, Stormbyte started out being real nice and then when my problem proved to be complicated, I was personally attacked both by Stormbyte and mks support...it was my fault somehow. They are all very testy.

If I were you, I would go with a more established av with better support.

 

I tried this as a potential replacement for Avast! I found my PC (AMD Barton 2500, 256MB RAM and XP Pro SP2) occasionaly slowed significantly. Additionally, Outlook (Office XP SP3) slowed to a crawl when opening.

I also didn't like that MKS apparantly disabled protection for quite a time while downloading updates.

Quite aggresive scanning - identified Pest Patrol exe's as viruses.

Bottom line - real potential, but needs polishing.

Eddie.

 

Can you set up a scheduled scan without putting in a password? I have XP Home and a password was not required like the Pro version.

 

Can you set up a scheduled scan without putting in a password? I have XP Home and a password was not required like the Pro version.

Yes I believe you can But I have not done it.
You can go here http://www.stormbyte.com/forums/ and get your answer for certain though.

Regards

 

I emailed Stormbyte about this and this was their reply:

Right now there is no way to schedule the task without a password. This is a
limitation of the Windows XP operating system. Version 2005 will use it's
own scheduler so this will be changed

They also said when you buy mks_vir 2004 you are entitled to free upgrades to the to next version.

 

One way that you should be able to do it, if you wish to keep your accounts password free, is to create a dummy passworded account that is used only by mks_vir and enter the appropriate information into the scheduler dialog box (including dummy account name in the Run as box). I haven't tried this explicitly to verify that it works and I realize that it's a bit of a kludge.

Blue

 

Well I just installed the mks_vir trial as part of my quest to find a replacement AV, my observations so far

Uses a lot of ram, (about 35mb) this isn’t really a problem as I have 1gig but disabling the email scanner (because it doesn’t support IMAP) doesn’t seem to free up any memory, or reduce the number of running processes.

Start-up and shutdown speed seem unaffected, and after running PCmark, 3Dmark and a variety of games there doesn’t seem to be a noticeable impact on system speed.

However if I run SpyBot search and destroy the system slows down completely, the SpyBot scan takes forever and after checking the mks monitor It looks like a huge amount of files are being scanned. Disabling the mks monitor causes the Spybot scan to proceed as normal but when I try to re-enable the mks monitor I get an error message and can’t get it to re-load until I reboot.

There doesn’t seem to be a way to specify which files are scanned by the on demand scanner. I assume it checks everything because a full system scan took absolutely ages.

Quarantine facilities are excellent and for once it’s an AV that lets you submit suspicious samples from within the program. As mks’s heuristics are supposed to be above average this makes good sense.

By default the resident monitor scanner is set to scan all files, does this mean it will scan everything no matter what the extension is? Is the Hosts option a better one?

 

The same thing here with spybot, and I have not been able to speed it up by excluding any file/folder so I just diable Monitor after blocking my connection with firewall. The ram usage is high but I hardly notice it, I was using AVK Pro on another box with much less ram usage 8-11MB and it really impacted applications.
I have noticed several post at stormbyte that people use the hosts option and add additional extensions.
Overall I have been using for one month and am very satisfied with MKS.