trialing avira suite now.. a few questions

first off is it normal to have 6 or 7 procc running from this suite? that seems like an awful lot..

is there any way to turn off any startup scans? this takes more time for my system to initially load than previously. i have to wait nearly 1-2 min before vista is actually usable. i have just to just sit and wait there i cant do anything till it loads?

overall i think its nice. i still think i like ess a bit better. but ill give this a bit more time.

btw this is running on my wife's laptop with minimal specs. please do not turn this into a vs thread but if i can ask are there any suites that use less procc or less amounts of ram while scanning. other than ess and avira. im def looking for more suggestions to trial.

avira seemed to literally suck up every last bit of ram i had while doing a on demand scan. vista said i had 0 left the whole time till it finished scanning.


thanks and please again im not asking if suite a is lighter than suite b i simply would like to know about overall procc that run and ram usage while actually scanning so i dont have to trial a ton of different av's. thanks

 

A Kawazaki ZX-10 fan. Nice choice of bike

zfactor, you may recieve better help over on the Avira forums: http://forum.avira.com/board.php?boardid=18&sid=7a7de3dd858e7241fd85f8f40a08193a

I'll have a go at answering your question.

In my experience, it was not uncommon for AntiVir to run several processes concurrently, depending on how I configured the program (i.e. mailguard, update settings & scheduled scans etc.)

Each process used very little ram at idle, of course this changed when Antivir was executing a full system scan or scanning incoming/outgoing emails etc. I found AntiVir was never a burden on my system, I am guessing the CPU & ram usage was quite low.

It might be useful to re-check the settings. For instance, verify the scanner process is set at the "normal" or "low" setting.

As for other programs, I have trialled quite a number of suites recently and found Kaspersky Internet Security 7 worked extremely well on my older XP Pro based PC. It ran extremely lightly at idle (I'm working off memory here, I believe it used less than 20MB) and didn't exceed 70MB while running a full system scan while I was on the internet (so the firewall was running plus the webscanner was running too).

There is a thread here on Wilder's about Kaspersky modifying files (in order to run a complete scan very, very quickly), so you may want to take a look at that thread before deciding to use Kaspersky.

I never had a single issue, but other posters have not been as fortunate.

Cheers.

 

Tho I never tried the suite, I find that number of procs normal for the complete package (having count AntiVir PE Premium uses 4 procs...)

As for the 'heavy' on-demand scan, that's strange. It's supposed avira to be one of the lightest suites
.

 

I didn't know that Avira performed a startup scan. There is nothing listed the Events Log. I've never had to wait a long time after a startup before my computer was usable. Avira is faster loading, and my computer is ready quicker than with any other suite I've tried.

I just re-read your post, and noticed you are using Vista. I'm using XP. Maybe that's the difference.

 

i mean overall i really like it if i could cut back some of its resource usage. i still think nod used less procc and less ram while scanning. im not sure if it does do a startup scan but it seems strange now that it takes so long to load up vista when before it would start MUCH faster..

 

Long story short, the AV and suite are the lightest I have found.

 

lol jeff, your more of a fanboy than me

 

Yep, what can I say Chris. My DNA tells it all.

 

Fully agreed

 

there are a lot I like, but only one I use. Now if I can just leave it alone.

 

this be true...

until others are tried

 

Others have been tried and extensively........

 

Yep, I for one have tried it and found it's the lightest I've every seen also. Have to concur guys...

 

about how much mb of usage does the entire suite take up?

 

For me it ran consistently at about 30mb total ram usage.... for a suite, nothing else comes close... that's very light. And I'm not just talking about what's reported in Task Manager as that's often misleading. I'm talking about measuring free ram before and after installation to get the real picture. A lot of tricks are used to get the task manager numbers to look good on some apps, but check your before and after and you'll see what they really use.

 

hmm ESS seems a bit more, but not by too much, its usually in the 30's, thats the only reason i asked, to compare for myself

edit
wat about without the firewall so just the Antivir PE premium, about how much does that take up?

 

Could someone tell me how the firewall performs? I see it does not do so well in its default settings on leak tests. But can it be configured to do real well? Also, I see the description says Avira has anti-adware- does it block ads on sites and banners? Finally, does Avira have a behavior blocker like KIS does- I think called IDS? Or do some people use an addtional behavior blocker?

thanks