Best Anti-Virus software?

Slainagain

Slainagain

Full Member
I know lots of people may have different opinions but thought i'd ask to see if anyone has any strong recommendations for the best virus progs out there, and as i don't work i'd ideally like one that doesn't cost a fortune to buy or pay for updates, have tried some free/trial ones but still no idea if they are much use compared to the ones that cost moolah.

As some may have noticed i've been having major problems lately, as mentioned in Help Desk, and have spent past week formatting and reinstalling all software over and over and over and over and...................

Getting to point where i'm just tempted to put a stick of dynamite up the PC's arse and light it.
 
Slainagain

Slainagain

Full Member
Seems to miss some of them tho, i just used Pandasoftware's online scan which found w32/sdbot.gen.worm for instance even tho AVG didn't find it although it had latest update.
 
Agravaine

Agravaine

Professional Slacker
Odd.

I don't even run a virus checker at home anymore. My PC has two firewalls, all the security patches and I don't open suspicious emails.
 
Chick

Chick

Cartwheel RIGHT
IMNSHO:
Norton is top dawg. You pay ���� for it but it does a good job
Mcafee < Norton
AVG > nothign. It's free, its fairly good. what can you say.

If virii are getting on your tits that much, i'd shell out for norton. that way if anything weird happens you can phoen them up and shout at them rather then juat fuming to yoruself and then taking a firemans axe to your pc.

If you don't wanan pay, find at least 2 freebies and run them.

If i may be so bold, here's a tip to getting a good install going:
1) Make a streamlined xp sp2 install cd (http://www.windows-help.net/WindowsXP/winxp-sp2-bootcd.html)
2) Get AV software on CD
3) Rebuild OS Without any net connection at all getting firewalls and AV software installed.
4) Plug in net, patch & update like a crazy mother. then you should be pretty sure of getting a clean machine.

The average TTO (Time to Owned) of a unpatched xp machine is about 5 mins. There is very little you can rely on out there.

All that said. A good run-over with a virus scanneer will clean out 99% of things.

good luck
 
Cullhaven

Cullhaven

Hernes Son
Well AVg found lots of stuff on my comp that Norton just didnt know existed. It also stopped some websites putting dialers etc in to temp internet files that doddery old Nortons just couldnt see. Biggest anti virus advice I would give anyone tho is: dont use Outlook Express - get Forte Agent.
 
McHoff H. McChrist

McHoff H. McChrist

4" Member
Generally good advice. Outlook Express's pretty insecure, I'd use something else.
AVG is perfectly adequate, but having more than one virus checker's never bad. I use F-Secure as well as AVG (pay version, get it free via Uni), which is better than free AVG, but most pay stuff is better than free stuff, funnily enough. ;)

Don't like Norton, since it takes over your computer somewhat. Installs a bunch of crap that you don't need, and is almost impossible to get rid of (reminds me of Real). Only advantage Norton seems to have is that yeah, you get technical support, so you can phone them up and bitch.

As Aggy said, if you've got a working firewall, have the uptodate security patches for whatever OS you're running, and don't open any dodgy downloads (such as emails, or buffysex.exe off kazaa), then you shouldn't have a problem with viruses. Or you could learn how to use Linux. :D
 
Last edited:
McHoff H. McChrist

McHoff H. McChrist

4" Member
Oh, and if you do use OE, make sure it's uptodate, and turn off the preview window, since there are exploits that use the previewing of an email to execute code in the email. Apparently this was how the partial Halflife 2 source code was stolen.
 
Dart

Dart

Dead Again, I need a Rez
F-secure seems to be better than NAV as it picked up something that NAV never know was there.

btw Aggy what 2 firewalls you using?
 
Agravaine

Agravaine

Professional Slacker
I was using Outpost 2.1 but XP SP2 has ****ed that right up on this machine. Works fine on my laptop still so I'm not sure what the problem is but they're supposed to be fixing it in version 2.5.

My Linksys router has it's own firewall too.

Tried the latest Zone Alarm Pro but it's still as ****e as it ever was.
 
McHoff H. McChrist

McHoff H. McChrist

4" Member
Yeah, hardware firewalls are funky. Did use Zonealarm, but it annoyed me after a bit :p

Aggy - I can see the advantages of using multiple virus scanners, but is there any real point to having more than one firewall? Seems somewhat counter-intuitive to me; ports are either closed or open, if you set up one properly, is there any advantage to having another?
 
Agravaine

Agravaine

Professional Slacker
I was only going to use the Linksys one but, when I tested it, half the time the testing sites report me as being stealthed and half the time not.

With both running, nothing can see my PC.

Basically, I don't trust the Linksys firewall :D
 
Bertyr

Bertyr

Full Member
Use F-Secure here too very happy with its detection rate

e.g. when I installed it, it scanned all my old email from 4-5 years ago (save tons of old mails) and found some virii in attachments there that norton hadn't noticed
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top