PC Tools free antivirus ??

PC Tools uses its own engine, It's using the PC Tools AntiVirus Engine which is based on another long-standing engine but is now separately developed by PC Tools. It has just passed WestCoast Labs AntiVirus certification .

 

Something is wrong with "it's present form"?

 

As it stands at the moment, PC Tools AV has poor detection rates. If they improve it in the future, maybe it can be usable as a product.

 

Just curious, but what exactly makes you say that?

 

Same here

 

Its not really "poor" in the sense that it lacks in signature detection, but it is based on the VirusBuster engine which, I have observed, has poor unpacking support compared to most other AVs. That by itself makes it poor in detection. Also, PC Tools AV used to have KAV engine, and compared to the earlier version, this version is very poor.

I do believe IBK tested VirusBuster in a supplementary comparative of those AVs that did not reach the standard level of certification. VirusBuster was below 80% in detection rates (it got more around 60% and 76% with DOS and OtherOS malware included in the total scores) and did not qualify for testing at AV-comparatives (at that time, June 2006).

 

I enjoyed reading above where PCTools A/V works with Vista. Considering that MS has only just released the first draft of the API to A/V companies and is not final by any means. Errr... really. PCTools is good at this that they don't need to hook into the kernal like everyone else?

How much protection something like this is going to provide sounds minimal at best.

- beads

 

why the hell would you go from the great kav engine down to virus bustor engine?
did kav engine cost to much to license?
lodore

 

Lol I dont konw. It was one of the worst decisions PC Tools could make. VirusBuster is just crap and Kaspersky is excellent. To go from Kaspersky to virusBuster is just ridiculous;

 

I don't know why they made this decision, but I suspect it had something to do with their real-time scanner which was extremely heavy on resources (and they didn't use iStreams or iChecker or iSwift). Version 3.0 onwards has VirusBuster engine, and its certainly not good at all.

 

No,look on their forum.I asked on this

 

I have looked at the PC Tools forum, but it still does not convince me well enough. They said that their AV is based on another long standing engine but now separately developed by PC Tools. The Database versions portrayed by PC Tools AV when 3.0 was released was consistent with the database version of Vexira AV (which is based on VirusBuster engine). The database versions are not consistent anymore though, so that must mean that PC Tools decided to take the VirusBuster engine and modify it independently. Also, the updates of PC Tools AV are in .vdb format and only Dr.Web and VirusBuster use this format for their updates.

 

I'm guessing the reason PC Tools dropped KAV is because they wanted to be able to modify and adapt the antivirus engine themselves, and Kaspersky wouldn't let them do this.

If you read on their forum about the PC Tools firewall, they admit it is based on the Look n Stop firewall, so Look n Stop obviously let them play around with it and adapt it for themselves.

That is my guess anyway...

I am surprised that Spyware Doctor 5.0 with antivirus is getting such a bashing on here. Surly the combination of Spyware Doctors excellent antispyware and an antivirus in one low foot print package has to give pretty good protection?

 

the antivirus is a waste. it wil just consume mroe resources and make SD even heavier than before.

 

yes it will turn in to spysweeper5x series.
unless you like bsod
lodore

 

I am currently running Spyware Doctor 5.0 beta with antivirus. I have the antivirus set to on demand so it scans when I do a spyware scan, but I have the background scan turned off as I have Antivir Personal Premium.

With this set up Spayware Doctor only uses around 10,000 KB

SDTrayApp.exe uses 1,232 KB
swdsvs.exe uses 8,192 KB

With the antivirus background scanner turned on it is still only uses around 12,000 KB.

The only problem I have encountered with Spyware Doctor 5.0 beta with antivirus is it takes ages to do a full spyware/antivirus scan. Around two and a half hours. But hopefully as it is only in beta, this will be improved before the final release.

 

I think they use Dr.Web engine. Why ?

Dr.Web use winsock dll`s (or used to), and so does PC Tools AV:

From HijackThis:

O10 - Unknown file in Winsock LSP: c:\programmer\fælles filer\pc tools\lsp\pctlsp.dll
O10 - Unknown file in Winsock LSP: c:\programmer\fælles filer\pc tools\lsp\pctlsp.dll
O10 - Unknown file in Winsock LSP: c:\programmer\fælles filer\pc tools\lsp\pctlsp.dll
O10 - Unknown file in Winsock LSP: c:\programmer\fælles filer\pc tools\lsp\pctlsp.dll

Update frequency can be set to every 30 minutes. Dr.Web does that too .

Two processes in memory. Runs very light here:

http://img456.imageshack.us/img456/8938/pctavdq0.png

 

No, PCTAV uses VirusBuster engine. If someone has a collection of malware with them, run PC Tools AV on those and compare the names of the detected malware with those of VirusBuster at VirusTotal. You will see a striking similarity.

 

Just found out, that Virusbuster uses LSP`s too

But still nice app.