[mrRobinson]

Ever since Norton 2004 ( which got really bloated and sucked down system resources like it owned my computer ), I've jumped ship and started trying out what was offered for free "home" use. After much reading and research I settled on AVG antivirus from Grisoft. I was happy with it initially but never was too thrilled with its interface. After a bit it wouldn't reliably auto update and would at times hang downloading virus defs. So I read a bit more and am now trying Avast! antivirus. This interface I like much much better and I like the feature they have called VRDB which is a great way to restore files mucked with by a virus.

So I'm curious what experiences anyone else has with antivirus software. It doesn't have to be free, I'm just looking for something that does its job without killing your computer, have a nice simple interface, and some good features. Others I've looked into but never tried: Kapersky, Panda, the Zonealarm one (since I use their firewall), F-Prot, Anti-vir.

[Dragonspawn]

well i use avg and its always proved reliable to me

[Chefelf]

I too was happy with AVG at first but I haven't been thrilled with it lately.

[TEMPT FATE]Personally I haven't really been using an anti-virus. I think I do a pretty good job of steering clear of things that would cause virus.[/TEMPT FATE]

[looktothesky]

I use AVG as well. It works alright I guess, but then again, nothing is safe on the FAMILY COMPUTER -- ooooo...

On my personal computer, when it was on the internet, I did the same as Chefelf. Avoid any places where viruses might be.

This post has been edited by looktothesky: 21 February 2005 - 05:03 PM

[srmoore]

I use nortons.. but thats because my company lets me install it and get updates for it for free on my home computers. (They have a special license for it)

[rock_dash]

I got Panda on September of last year, and I was happy with it until recently. I just got a new hard drive and upgraded to Windows XP Pro, and so I need to get Panda registered on my computer. But everytime I go to thier website and tell them, "Yes, I live in the US, yes, I'm already a registered user, blah blah" it won't go past the page that asks for my user name and password. It's really starting to make me mad. Long before I got Panda though, I tried to get AVG, and they wouldn't send me the activation number. I have bad luck with antivirus software, I guess...

[fligh]

I use AVG, it has a problem with wanting my comptuer to restart before it can update the virusDB, But I think that's a windows 98 problem that's came from when I moved the harddrive from my old computer to my new one.

We use an extreamly old version of F-Prot at school and i think it did a good job back in its day, I don't think our version has been updated in a few years though.

I've worked on computers with AVAST and didn't really like it, it wouldn't remove the virus and I had to go into DOS and delete the file that way.

I've never know anyone to use Norton past its free trial that comes with stuff.

[Emu]

when I was home for thanksgiving, I had to restore my mom's desktop computer (about five years old, it's a winXP machine) to factory settings because it was so infested with viruses and spyware and broken .dll files. once that was done it worked like new, except I had grown complacent after using linux with no antivirus or firewall of my own on my school's fairly secure network, so I didn't install any firewall or antivirus and I shouldn't have been surprised when a week later I got a panicked phone call saying the computer wasn't working again because it had gotten more spyware.

so, does anyone know of a good free firewall I could install next time I'm at home? preferably one with a straightforward interface that my not-particularly-technophilic mother could figure out when I'm not there. we had norton, but it was a royal pain in the ass - I'd prefer to install something that is smaller and free. also, are AVG and Avast still good free antivirus programs to use? I was tempted to just install Ubuntu instead which would solve that problem but I decided not to because I was worried that she would have trouble with Windows attachments she gets in emails from work. Any advice on this one?

This post has been edited by Emu: 10 December 2006 - 03:04 PM

[Gobbler]

I'd say that the Sygate Personal Firewall (hope that link still works) is an option, but I'm not very sure about that stuff, what with me also being a happy happy Linux user.

[Deepsycher]

I use Clamwin:

http://www.clamwin.c...ent/view/18/46/

A year ago I got a trojan from a no cd patch from a game from a website. I had Macafee 7 home but that was useless as it worked on a browser setting but that was the very thing it was embedded into. I didn't like their demeaning idea of home. Macafee Enterprise 8 caused huge delays when opening up folders on the file server.


AVG Anti Virus demo/trial in 2002 was shoddy from my experience. Someone brought me their computer to look at. Upon detection it says something like "We recommend you put this into the virus vault" and didn't give me the option of deleting it. After that some error message about not being able to move the file and it stopped responding each time.

It was only a trojan and I took out the links from registry. Then tried an experiment. I did not delete the file, instead I did a scan for it and the same thing about only putting it in the virus vault without being able to move it but did not stop responding that time. Simply I deleted it. I tried that AVG anti virus trial again with a bunch of loose trojans I stored up from a cd in 2002, virus vault as the only choice and the same message. Well I am sure they moved on from there on their demo's to take deletion seriously. Unless of course it was paid for.

For a free firewall I have found one a while back but haven't used it yet:

http://www.programme...al/firewall.htm


Just saw:
Sygate?
I thought it wasn't free years back.
I'll take a look at that.

This post has been edited by Deepsycher: 10 December 2006 - 04:29 PM