Anti-Virus programs

tomz/TIDE · Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 9:41 pm Post subject: Anti-Virus programs

I guess we all use some sort of Anti Virus application on our PCs,it has become a sad fact of life,but as there are many good (and free) prgs out there maybe you could tell us what works for you.

I use Avast/AVG 7.5/Ad-Aware and Spybot Search and Destroy and have found this combination to work well and also to my liking. I dont like Norton or similar as they are too invasive (popups etc) and most symantec stuff needs the original disk if you want to uninstall it. Great if you installed it in the first place but not so good if it happens to be on a 2nd hand PC and you dont have the disk Crying or Very sad

I have tested these 4 programs extensively in the past 18 months and as all of them are available free to download and use on your home PC, I highly recomend them to all Smile

I have also tested others (eg Zone Alarm) and found all to be lacking in some way Cool

tomz

retrobrad · Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 9:49 pm Post subject:

yep i use avg free edition also, it does everything with basically no input from me!

couldnt be happier and best of all... its free!

ozzipete · Posted: Fri Jul 13, 2007 6:32 am Post subject:

I have to agree with you about Nortons, I was a die hard Nortons fan using it way back from the days of DOS and Win 95, as Symantec grew I think it has become bloated and memory hungry, not to mention inefficient.
I have tried AVG and found it to be a good prog and Spybot is pretty good also.
Adsgone with a decent Anti Virus prog is also a good combination

A good router / firewall setup is also helpful
Kaspersky has a good anti virus prog available. on the downside its can be too tight when it comes to day to day usage

tomz/TIDE · Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 10:52 pm Post subject: Anti-Virus programs

Nortons used to be tops in my book,I remeber running windows 95 with Nortons protection,and even though it was overwhelming,it did the job and did it well, but it was even then very invasive (controlling)

As for firewalls,silly me but I have never used them,I dont see a need for my purposes,bearing in mind that I do reformat both of my PCs that I use on the net, every 2 months, at the very latest. This keeps my history extremely CLEAN and as I have all the additional applications on a seperate disk for installation, it only takes an hour and a half to get everything back to a START level. Cool

tomz

retrobrad · Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 10:57 pm Post subject:

Yeah thats a pretty good idea, i should look at making backups of my laptop and then re-installing it all, it would probably make things run a bit faster too.

tomz/TIDE · Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2007 12:24 am Post subject: Anti-Virus programs

Yeah a good idea as it will save a lot of time when it comes to reinstalling your software on your PC (be it a laptop or other) the hardest part are all the updates that you need. Crying or Very sad

tomz

ozzipete · Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 3:08 pm Post subject:

I try and do a clean install every 6 months or so I just format the lot re partition my primary drive and restore from the apps on my backup I used to run a RAID config but thats not necessary I dont think unless you are launching missiles and just cant afford a crashed system my router monitors all ports and routes some to a dummy IP so it shows up with nothing in theory no ports should respond to a ping anyway ***Hopefully**

retrobrad · Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 3:18 pm Post subject:

tomz/TIDE · Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 10:59 pm Post subject: Anti Virus Programs

Yeah a clean install every 6 months sounds great, I do mine every 2 but now Im thinking that maybe just twice a year would be adequate for me also.

The main thing I have learned about the current Viruses is that they attack WIN O/S, Media Player, Internet Explorer (6 or 7) and the MBR of a hardrive. Once the MBR is killed or unaccessable your hardrive is dead

(MBR - Master Boot Record)

Check the code postings on this site for PC problems, as I have just done another post in this area Smile

tomz

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ozzipete · Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 4:31 pm Post subject: Re: Anti Virus Programs

tomz/TIDE · Posted: Sun Aug 05, 2007 6:54 pm Post subject: Anti-Virus programs

The other odd thing I have come across is that some people I know do not run their various AntiVirus prgs when they come off the net, seems to me they think that by running it the next day or the day after is just as effective, but alas rebooting a system that could just have picked something up only imbeds it further onto that system.

Im not paranoid about it, but about 9 months back I lost a 40gb Hardrive, it was a time when I was on the net non-stop for 3-4 days. So now I run these time consuming (but ever so good for your PC) programs everyday at least once a day. It takes about an hour , but hey thats progress for you Sad

tomz

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