Antivirus? Which do you recommend and why?

I use Avast AntiVirus because so far it's worked great for me. It does what it should, like automatically update its virus definitions, informs me of program updates for the actual software, and can scan incoming e-mail, IM file transfers etc. Best of all it's free. You register your copy and it's good for like 14 months, I believe. Once those 14 months are up you just re-register and get another software key.
 
using avg free edition at the moment, waiting for clamwin to finish up the real-time scanning module then i'll switch to that. i like to support opensource and i've had a luck using the portableapp version of clamwin on my usb drive to clean up family member's pcs.
 
I switched from Kaspersky to Nod32 a couple of years ago and have never looked back. Kaspersky is an excellent AV but the small footprint and superlative detection-rate of NOD32 won me over.

AVG Free gets installed on computers I work on (for most clients, the operative word is 'Free') -- but I'm a tad squeamish about that particular AV.

Case in point:

The last pc I worked on had no AV and no adware/spyware software installed, so you can imagine the state it was in. I cleaned up the crapware then installed AVG. During the system scan a trojan was detected but when all was said and done the trojan was only reported -- not cleaned, quarantined or disabled. I have no idea why it wasn't auto-cleansed. (I was able to remove the trojan by manually locating the exe, right-click > scan with AVG > and remove. I then had to manually remove traces of it from the Registry.)

My vote > NOD32.
 
I too had the AVG problem with it detecting, but not cleaning.

That was when I switched to Avira - which is the free antivirus I install for customers now.
 
undeadsac said:
i use kapersky and it seems to work just fine.

I purchased my copy from isohunt.com i think.
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Are you suggesting that you downloaded a pirated version via a torrent library? If so, then I hope you got a rootkit which is stealing your credit card information as I speak.
 
....enough to get my interest. A few questions:

a) Some newsgroups report noticable slow-down when opening an application when NOD32 is installed...what has the experience of the folks here been?
b) System and program integrity...any programs that seem to have a problem with NOD 32?

Thanks...thinking of finally moving away from Norton..

John
 
coachjohn said:
....enough to get my interest. A few questions:

a) Some newsgroups report noticable slow-down when opening an application when NOD32 is installed...what has the experience of the folks here been?
b) System and program integrity...any programs that seem to have a problem with NOD 32?

Thanks...thinking of finally moving away from Norton..

John
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a) never used newsgroups, so dunno.
b) not to my knowledge. NOD32 has been great and hasn't fucked up anything, unlike some AVs...
 
I am VERY impressed with NOD32..and can't imagine going back to Norton AV. It's everything this thread said it would be...fast, unobtrusive, with a small footprint, etc. - you won't even know it's there until it saves your PC from a meltdown from a virus. Seamless integration with Outlook, does NOT make boot time an insufferable "on-hold" pattern like NAV 2006 did...between NOD32 and the newest version of SpyDoctor from PCTools, I'm feeling pretty secure (famous last words).

John
 
coachjohn said:
I am VERY impressed with NOD32..and can't imagine going back to Norton AV. It's everything this thread said it would be...fast, unobtrusive, with a small footprint, etc. - you won't even know it's there until it saves your PC from a meltdown from a virus. Seamless integration with Outlook, does NOT make boot time an insufferable "on-hold" pattern like NAV 2006 did...between NOD32 and the newest version of SpyDoctor from PCTools, I'm feeling pretty secure (famous last words).

John
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Thats a pretty good combo to have. As long as you play it smart you should be fine.
 
I've been through ALMOST all the Anti Virus software of the market and my favorites are NOD32 and BitDefender. BitDefender can get a bit annoying at times and its not as clean as NOD32 but by they are both amazing A/V. My vote goes with BitDefender because I use it on my main rig and I've been virus free. The only time I got a trojan was when I had freakin PC Cillin running. Now that is a piece of garbage software. I think the best possible combo would be as follows.

P.S. Either BitDefender or NOD32 would do

BitDefender
UnHackMe (rootkit detector)
Spyware Blaster (free)

That will give you a malware free PC.
 
and received this:

Error occurred while scanning MBR sector of the 3. physical disk. Error reading sector.
Error occurred while scanning MBR sector of the 4. physical disk. Error reading sector.

Brand new system, system is working great...any ideas?

John
 
coachjohn said:
and received this:

Error occurred while scanning MBR sector of the 3. physical disk. Error reading sector.
Error occurred while scanning MBR sector of the 4. physical disk. Error reading sector.

Brand new system, system is working great...any ideas?

John
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Run scandisk and let it repair the disk, it's not a A/V Issue here. It's the Hard Drive Issue. Hope this will solve that.

 
I too ditched NAV a few years ago after getting tired of it bogging down by boxes. I went with NOD32 and it's been great. Having said that, I picked up a trojan the other day and neither NOD32 or NAV (after re-installing it), picked it up. I threw the free trial of Kapersky on there and a few moments into its scan, blam, it found it. Along with another trojan as well. Now I'm beginning to think Kapersky is the way to go. WTF NOD32 & NAV :mad:
 
Unfortunatly not one antivirus program can find everything. Kinda like antispyware programs. Would be nice though.

Probably some things nod32 can't detect that kaspersky can and vise versa.
 
NOD32 all the way.

Installs in about 10 seconds, Fast updates (trial update servers are intentionally de-prioritized somewhat, but still quick), lowest footprint of any AV in my experience, fastest scans of any AV in my experience.

If you're not familiar with NOD32, it works a little differently. It relies on the best heuristic detection engine on the market today, allowing it to block many viruses/malware immediately before a signature update can be completed by the virus engineers.

Anyone remember Bagle? Yea, NOD32 stopped this baby in it's tracks on zero day, as soon as it came out, if you had NOD32, you were safe.

Here's some excellent reading if you're interested: http://www.eset.com/products/compare_heuristic_detection.php
This independent consulting firm based in Spain performs real-time analysis of malware outbreak detection across a wide range of antivirus vendors. And as you can see from the graph below, NOD32 has by far the highest detection rate, and the fastest performance (tested separately by Virusbulletin). In fact, NOD32 is on average, 2-10 times faster than the competition.
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And: http://www.eset.com/company/article.php?contentID=1667
“The AV-Comparatives report underscores the value of advanced heuristics, which is the cornerstone of ESET’s NOD32 software,” said Andrew Lee, chief research officer at ESET. “According to the test results, Kaspersky releases nine times as many updates as ESET, yet detects one third of the malware that ESET does proactively. Conversely, ESET releases two to three times as many updates as Symantec and McAfee and also has two to three times greater proactive protection.”
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