OT: Looking for good virus protection on PC

I have used AVG for a few years now. I have installed on maybe 10 or

12 different comuters (for friends, kids, relatives, etc) and have yet to have it breached by a virus on any of them. Of coure that is not scientific or difinitive in any way. My experiece with Norton Antivirus was not as good on my own computer, which is what prompted me to try AVG. It seems to run pretty quietly in the background without causing problems with other software, too. I had lots of issues with Norton conflicting with stuff. I liked AVG enough to pay for it, just to help support the cause.

I'm sure others will have other (likely more useful) opinions. I have not tried any of the other free ones.

Just my 2 cents. YMMV

Hope that helps,

Al A.

I have a Compaq Presario running XP and about a month ago I started having problems. My power supply fan would slow down and speed up, often stopping. If I left the computer on overnight I would usually find that it had crashed and after rebooting, get a message saying that my computer had recovered from a serious error. I submitted my problem to this group and received the response that I needed a new power supply. This was probably good advice considering the information I supplied. I'm glad I did not take that advice. I'm running Mcaffee AV and keep it updated but I started noticing symptoms of a virus. (a popup box saying that there is no disk in the drive.) I ran Trend House call which reported that I had viruses but could not remove all of them. Next I ran the Kaspersky scan and it told me I had the crss virus and the vtutu virus. Supposedly it removed them but my computer still crashed overnight. Next I tried Bitdefender and it reported that it found and removed 2 unnamed viruses. Now my computer has been running continuously for a week with no crashes. My power supply fan runs at a constant speed now. I don't know if this will solve your problem but it definitely looks to me like hard-to-find viruses can control a Compaq power supply cooling fan. housecall.trendmicro.com

My apologies in advance for this OT post. The knowledge about PC's in

I also had trouble with Norton. Swiched to AVG and had nothing but joy. And its free.

Karl

Symantec and McAffee have reps as being bloated messes. I had McAffee for a while several years ago and had to turn off background scanning because it noticably slowed everything I did.

I've been runing NOD32 for several years. It has one of the best reported success rates for virus detection and I can't tell when it is running in the background. I'd have to say it isn't the most obvious program to set-up and I find it easier to get information about particular viruses from other sources. I don't think there is a free version of NOD32.

gets you there -- the company is ESet.

AVG also has a very good reputation.

I found out, that AVG has plugins for Outlook, Eudora and a couple of other email programs. Will AVG detect viruses in email attachments using Mozilla Thunderbird. That is the email client I use. Norton AntiVirus detects viruses coming in through Thunderbird.

I'm not sure, Abrasha. I currently use Thunderbird only for usenet stuff, part of a slow migration for me to open source. I have not yet started using it for email as well, but that's next. I am sure someone here can chime in on that point.

-AL

I have been running AVG for several years now, trouble-free. It updates every morning at the time I specify and works just fine with Thunderbird. It quarantines and encrypts any attachment that it thinks is a virus. I have had none slip through, nor any false positives.

Edward

Abrasha wrote:

I use AVG. It is good. Free too for the free version.

I have gotten viruses over time. If ur updated, ur ok 99% of the time. Otherwise, some fancy high-stepping and an occasional run under DOS has fixed the problem everytime so far.

_-_-bear

I don't know where you are located, but WalMart has the Iolo System Mechanic 6 from Iolo on sale. It includes a very good firewall, antivirus, anti parasite, pop-up blocker, home page protector, and a bunch of really good system utilities, for example registery checkers/optimizers. You get very frequent updates as the threats change. Well worth the money.

Uncle George

I've been running "AVG free" for some time now and I just love it but it was never able to get rid of a parasite I picked up called "Winfixer". So I downloaded the AVG trial version called "AVG 7.1 pro" and I "Think" it's rid me of this horrid Winfixer. I'll give it a few days, but so far it seems to have disappeared (Maybe it's just having a snooze.) We'll see!

Your first challenge is getting all the Norton and Symantec software out of your system, as their stuff tends to be REALLY persistent and hidden all over the place. And if not removed properly, you are likely to have an unstable system.

Go to the Norton site and get the Uninstall tool for your exact version you are running. If you try using the Windows Uninstall on it, you are looking for a heap of trouble.

I do fine with McAfee - it's pay, but it behaves nicely. And it is usually cheaper to buy the latest version upgrade (and get the year included) than paying for a renewal on last year's version.

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I also got fed up with Symantec (in particular their idea of "support"). I switched to F-Protect from Frisk

and although it is not free it is reasonably priced and has responsive support people. AVG is supposed to be good - NOD32, while an excellent product is definitely not free. Something to be aware of if you have several computers and share the files is a feature that seems to happen to some (me included) when you manage to rip Norton out -- it screws up a registry entry that has to do with the IRPStackSize -- the end result is when you try to share a folder you get a message to the effect "not enough server storage is available to process this command" (talk about a geeky message!). Anyway, it is fairly simple to fix -- see the following links for more details if you run into this (getting Norton out of your system can be an experience in itself ... ).

See the Microsoft KB article at

or the link at for additional information. The MS link also references a number of Symantec links (surprise !!) for more information. My machine (the one sharing the folder) used to have Norton on it, but it was removed (well, all the pieces I could find :-) )

mikey

Yes it does. I been using Thunderbird with AVG Free for over a year and it works just fine.

Just MKS Vir!

on line skaner:

Norton Internet Security 2005 has kept me from getting any viruses (so far as I know) but every once in a while an update seems to corrupt one or more of its files. The last one happened a few weeks ago and I decided to remove Norton and re-install it. Specific and complex instructions to do so were found on the Norton web site, which included using the Win XP software removal feature, followed by instructions for a bunch of manual folder and registry deletions. The software removal tool caught all of it, NIS 2005 was re-installed and has been working fine ever since.

I've still got 6 more months on this license but will probably switch to something else at that time.

Mike

I have been using various versions of AVG Free for years now. It works very well!

Steve R.

This is why I avoid putting Norton products on my computer - Mucking around by hand in the Registry should truly be a last resort measure, instead of being part of a normal 'uninstall' process. It is way too easy to turn your once-working system into a big paperweight.

And then you have to waste a whole lot more time fixing that, or wipe the drive and start over.

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I just installed AVG. Now I just have to spend a little time figuring out the program and the interface. It is definitely not as nice looking as Norton, but if it does the job, who cares.

After installing AVG, I disabled Norton Virus protection. Well, let me tell you, Norton did not like being told, that I did not want to use it any longer. Every 30 seconds a dialog box would flash on my monitor, more or less telling me to turn Norton Virus protection back on, or else. There was just no way to shut it off, without being told over and over again, that I really should not do that.

The only way to shut that damned program up, was to uninstall it. Luckily, I was able to do that without having to get rid of the parts of Norton Systemworks that I like. (one button checkup, SpeedDisk, DiskDoctor, etc.)

Now I have to figure out how to tell AVG, NOT to do a complete system scan every day, because that takes about an hour each time. I think for me, once a week is enough. I do like that it checks for updates once a day also, like Norton did. Although I think Norton's updates were generated from Symantec, instead of from the program. I may be wrong about that.

Thanks for all your suggestions

I have a computer that my daughter uses for various things. This computer is running behind a router and is runing XP pro with default settings for the firewall.

I noticed that it is not takes a minute or two to shut off after clicking the right spot. Adaware only finds a few tracking cookies. Spybot finds absolutely nothing. AVG finds nothing.

What is wrong?

chuck