My Formal Informal Test

lodore,
I respect that line of thinking. I really do. However, do not fall into the category to describe. I do have a clue about pcs and would not need to pay a pc guy to fix it for me. I am not trying to discredit what you say, so please don't take offense. Also, I am not trying to sound arrogant, but as long as I am made aware of the presence of something malicious I can, and will, deal with it in the cases the AV cannot handle it. In other words, my expectations of an AV are that it proactively prevents infection, first and foremost, and in the event that prevention fails, I expect to be immediately notified of the presence and identification of the nasty. It seems that NOD32 and KAV are very capable of meeting my expectations and they do so in a most efficient and least intrusive and conflictual manner.

Regarding McAfee, I have no confidence in their products primarily due to their highly publicized problem that involved incorrectly identifying critical Windows files as viruses and irreparably deleting them.

TonyW,
You raise a good point. Your solution seems to be exactly consistent with the solution BitDefender allegedly provided to Raxco upon Raxco’s inquiry into the conflict. My concern is that when the conflict occurs, according to Raxco, the OS crashes. Personally, I never experienced the conflict despite having tested the software for over one month on my laptop and I never disabled the active shield.

Maybe the thing I need to do is to contact someone within Raxco that is very familiar with the alleged conflict and learn more specifics. THANKS TonyW!!! ARE YOU TRYING TO HELP ME, OR HURT ME HERE?!?!? JUST WHEN I NARROW THE FIELD TO TWO YOU BROADEN IT BACK TO THREE.

TonyW
You raise another good point. I remember reading about Arcadia’s proposed solution. I cannot recall exactly what it was, but I remember thinking that it was not acceptable to me for some reason. Wasn’t it something like you had to select all of the files that you wanted scanned and it would exclude the rest? My thinking was that every time I added a subdirectory to my system I would have to remember to go into NOD32 and add that directory to my “items to scan” list.

Actually, TonyW may have the answer to the long debated KAV vs. NOD32 struggle. Maybe the answer is BitDefender. Let me call Raxco in the morning and see what they have to say. BitDefender updates frequently, has a nice GUI, scores well in all of the AV tests, ranks #! with both PC Mag and TopTenReviews, and has a cool translucent File Zone monitor. If Raxco can give me confidense that I won't trash my system by running BD with FDISR, then I may go with it. Did I mention that BD costs like half as much as NOD32 and KAV? If I cannot get reassurance of compatibility, then the field will be back to two and the decision gets considerably more challenging.

 

I thought I would update the scan results from the original posting (#1) to include the results from my test of KAV 6.0.

KAV
# of files scanned: 248,168
Scan duration(min): 42:56
Scan Rate (files/min.): 5,780

 

sorry I didnt mean you didnt understand and would need a computer guy to fix it. I was talking about people who just put on an antivirus because they are told to and if it cant get rid of it automaticaly they would have to pay a pc guy.

aka the adverage person who dont know anything about pcs

 

Dallen,
I assume you are not using the option to scan only new or changed files.
Jerry

 

JerryM,
Your assumption is correct. I should have mentioned that earlier. The function that you mention drastically reduces scan times. When I say drastically I mean down to under 2 minutes for a complete system scan. I really like this feature.

Some people fear that this feature reduces security. The reality is that it probably does, but the magnitude of the reduction has to be small. I could forsee a scenario where enabling this function poses a threat. The scenario is as follows:

I have a virus on my system that Kaspersky does not know about, thus it is not included in the definitions. I scan my system for the first time using KAV. The virus evades KAVs heuristics and the file gets labled as being OK. Subsequent scans see the file has been marked OK, thus the file is not scanned.

The likelihood of this occurring has to be infentesimal.

 

Its a shame that a brilliant security solution is held back by such incompatibilities....But I would advise you to wait a little bit. BitDefender 10 should be out sometime this month (probably 15th to 30th) and considering that the issues are quite widespread, there is a high change the issue with FDISR (and others) will be fixed.

As for others, NOD32 and KAV are both very good solutions, and the competition should be fierce once Kaspersky releases their new heuristics engine.

 

i was looking in to bitdefender but what put me off is the really slow scanning.

but i do like the look of bitdefender 10

 

Actually,
According to my admittedly unscientific results, BD's scan rate is right up there with NOD32 and is better than KAV.

 

wow that is great news for bitdefender.

i was looking in to bitdefender 10 and you helped my dissisition a bit. nod32 kav or bitdefender just like yours lol.

when you choose one can you tell me which one and why?

and I think you should wait and try bd 10

 

Personally, I found BitDefender to be a bit slower than NOD32 or KAV (without iSwift or iChecker or iStreams) while performing On-Demand Scans. But this would be due to quite a few reasons:

- BD has very good static unpack engine (and my computer has lots and lots of packed files)
- BD heuristics have VB emulator, Generic Unpacker, memory emulator etc. (much like what NOD32 has)

All these technologies will take more time to scan, considering that BitDefender was most probably not written in assembly like NOD32....

 

i still think i will get it soon thou and wont let slow scan times put me off a great product

 

lodore,
I have actually already bested BD Internet Security 10 RC1. I like it. However, I am reluctant to trade Zone Alarm's software firewall protection for BitDefender's.

Also, I am in contact with both Raxco and BitDefender and trying to convince them to work out their differences. It is a shame that it takes a nobody like me to motivate two rather large and successful software companies to communicate with another for the purposes of improving their respective products to make them play well with one another. After all, if the two softwares get along, both companies will benefit from an increase in the number of customers that are willing to use their products.

 

I was in contact today with a software engineer from BitDefender. The topic of our conversation was the alleged conflict between BitDefender and both FD-ISR and Perfect Disk. I have not been able to generate a conflict and I've tested both BitDefender 9 Standard (build 9.5) and BitDefender Internet Security RC1 in conjunction with both FD-ISR and PD. However, Raxco maintains their claim that a conflict exists that results in an OS crash.

BitDefender's software engineer claims that the driver conflict is addressed by going to the shield tab in the Antivirus options section and clicking on Advanced>>> and adding the installation paths of Perfect Disk and FD-ISR to the "Exclude path from scan" section.

The question then becomes is it necessary to install FD-ISR and PD after installing BitDefender? This would seem to be the only way to exclude the installation paths to avoid the conflict, would it not?

 

I just wanted to update this post. I decided on BitDefender Antivirus version 10. However, after experiencing the conflict between BitDefender and FD-ISR I contacted BitDefender. Eventually, I was put in direct contact with the Head of Technical Support and indirect contact with the Product Manager and was assured the issue would get attention. Not only did the issue not get resolved, repeated promises to get back with me went unfulfilled. As a result of this conflict, my experience with customer support, and other issues (weighing down my system, slowing response times, and system hangs) I’ve decided to abandon the use of BitDefender.

Due to issues with Kaspersky, NOD32, F-Secure, and BitDefender combined with a noticeable improvement in Symantec’s Norton 2007 product, I’ve decided to stick with Symantec. It is my AV of choice.

 

I cannot agree more. After trying various Av's, i have found symantec to be most stable and secure. It is one of the antivirus which rarely has false positive.

 

dallen, could you please keep us updated on how NAV 2007 performs, and how satisfied you are with it?

 

Of course I will.

 

dallen have you tryed the antivir beta suite?

 

I am trying to stay away from suites right now. Although I feel that they will eventually be the way to go for the best security, I do not feel that they are there yet. Furthermore, I to test beta software, but I am looking for something to actually use for protection and I don't rely on beta software for protection.

Thanks for the suggestion. I will definately take a look at the product.

 

For those that are still interested (of those that ever were), I have concluded that BitDefender 10 is not my AV of choice for a number of reasons. I just want to elaborate on those reasons:

First, the software conflicts with Raxco's products (FD-ISR & Perfect Disk). What I mean by conflicts is that a BSOD results when FD-ISR is working on the creation of a snapshot and the BitDefender process vsserv.exe is running. The BSOD can be avoided if the vsserv.exe process is terminated. I have not personally observed the conflict between Perfect Disk and BitDefender, but I trust Raxco that it exists.

Second, my system became quite sluggish when using BitDefender 10.

Finally, despite my efforts (trust me I put forth effort) in trying to work with both Raxco and BitDefender on this issue. Raxco was very open and willing to do what they could to remedy the problem. Apparently, both Raxco and BitDefender have known of this conflict since March (it seems that this problem existed under BitDefender 9). However, BitDefender has not been so willing to solve this problem. I have been in communication with the Head of Technical Support and was given assurance that I would have more information about the conflict within a week. This was over a week and a half ago.

My conclusion is that BitDefender really does not have the desire to fix this conflict. Therefore, they have chosen to exclude me as a potential customer. Meanwhile, I decided to give NAV 2007 a shot. Remembering that my increasing dissatisfaction with Norton that has spanned over five years is what sparked this test of potential replacements, my initial impression of NAV 2007 is positive. It seems lighter, has a cutting edge user interface, and has no noticeable adverse effects on my other software. It is premature to say with certainty that I am completely satisfied, but they do have my $39.99.

 

Hi Dallen,
[However, BitDefender has not been so willing to solve this problem.]

I reached the same conclusion, and do not intend to go back to BD, especially since there are several excellent, and better in my opinion, AVs available.

Best,
Jerry