New version of Avira just wasted 5 hours of my time

G

Gnasher

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
1,140
And for the last time too. Avira 2012 was released today and it gave a warning about a hidden file altering memory space. It tells me to use the rescue disk, Go download that and it shows no issue with a hidden file because no drivers are loaded in that mode but it shows IO error on disk SRO so rewrite master boot records to fix it but it still shows the same error.

Final solution. Uninstall Avira and install Avast which shows no fucking issues at all in windows scan or the boot time scan. I expect the hidden driver is RadeonPro for my video card. Never detected an issue before until I updated to Avira 2012. Avira has never detected a real virus/trojan but has wasted my time plenty with false positives. GRRRRR!!!! :mad:
 
I used to use Avira a few years ago, but have been happy with MSE since I found out about it. Free and I haven't gotten any viruses bad enough to reformat since then either. It does its job well enough for me.
 
rekd0514 said:
but have been happy with MSE since I found out about it.
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I havent even bothered looking at other AV solutions, especially since MSE changed their EULA to include a certain amount of servers and workstations for small businesses.
 
I'm all for brand alternatives but MSE is a fast, lightweight, easy to install program that I can trust not to turn into adware or a toolbar installer any time soon.
 
Wow that sucks man ive used avira alot and ya it has some false positives in it and ive used teh rescue disc with never a hitch. Its always been a good backup while i do virus scans for customers i use avira avg and kaspersky in the reverse order. Kaspersky usually pwns everything first :D, then i use avira boot disk 2nd and install avg last after scans and set my customers on there way with no problems.
Kaspersky can always be gotten for free after mail in rebates during the christmas season as to what i use and how i get it free. Happy Surfing :D
 
I'm not on the Avira beta team and that post is from Sep 8. The version I was running was a final. I'm still concerned about the disk I/O error so better run some more diagnostics. I expect that will be another hour or two of my time wasted and there is no real issue. I thought PCs were supposed to make better use of our time and not waste it? I spend more time on security and diagnostics than I do using it.
 
rekd0514 said:
I used to use Avira a few years ago, but have been happy with MSE since I found out about it. Free and I haven't gotten any viruses bad enough to reformat since then either. It does its job well enough for me.
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I've used MSE twice now and I don't like the fact I can't easily disable realtime protection from the system tray icon for when I play games. When it was first released it slowed down disk access more than Avira too but don't know if that is true now. Avira is very light on resources and was easy to disable realtime protection. Avast makes it easy to disable too. Not MSE though, they don't want users to be able to disable it easily.
 
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuk...just realized why I was getting the I/O error on SR0. SR0 is Linux speak for the CDROM drive. Avira is checking the non existent mbr on the cdrom drive and is why it is getting a disk I/O error, der. :)
 
jadams said:
I havent even bothered looking at other AV solutions, especially since MSE changed their EULA to include a certain amount of servers and workstations for small businesses.
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They finally opened it up to allow it on servers? Last I knew it was only legit on desktop/client operating systems (up to 10), the installer literally would not allow it to be installed on a server.
 
Gnasher said:
I've used MSE twice now and I don't like the fact I can't easily disable realtime protection from the system tray icon for when I play games. When it was first released it slowed down disk access more than Avira too but don't know if that is true now. Avira is very light on resources and was easy to disable realtime protection. Avast makes it easy to disable too. Not MSE though, they don't want users to be able to disable it easily.
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I don't see why you need to disable it for any games....
 
/usr/home said:
I don't see why you need to disable it for any games....
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Me either. I'm about as hardcore as a normal adult can be when it comes to gaming, and I've never had a problem with MSE slowing anything down.

ps if you're a hardcore pc gamer you will disappear in 5 days ;)
 
Gnasher said:
I've used MSE twice now and I don't like the fact I can't easily disable realtime protection from the system tray icon for when I play games. Not MSE though, they don't want users to be able to disable it easily.
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I was bigtime hardcore into very system intensive games...I haven't had to disable antivirus real time protection since back when I was stupid enough to use Symantec Corporate Edition..back in like....version 6 days...(that was Windows 98se days I think).

But if you insist on disabling real time file protection (even though there are benchmark articles done at several gaming sites that prove it's really useless)....it's just a checkbox. Really..it's just a checkbox...called "Turn on Real Time Protection". Click it..remove the check..done. Phew...that was difficult eh?
 
When I dont use Security essentials, I use AVG- It isnt great, but I use it for most of my virtual machines since it isnt really resource intensive.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
I was bigtime hardcore into very system intensive games...I haven't had to disable antivirus real time protection since back when I was stupid enough to use Symantec Corporate Edition..back in like....version 6 days...(that was Windows 98se days I think).

But if you insist on disabling real time file protection (even though there are benchmark articles done at several gaming sites that prove it's really useless)....it's just a checkbox. Really..it's just a checkbox...called "Turn on Real Time Protection". Click it..remove the check..done. Phew...that was difficult eh?
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If it is so simple then why doesn't Microsoft just make it a simple option from the systemtray instead of having to open the app to do it? That is my complaint about it and not because I needed you to be a smartass and tell me how to do it.

As for real time protection not costing resources, show me these benchmarks instead of just claiming it makes no dif. I've read similar articles and there is no AV app in the world that does not cost resources. How can it be checking files in real time and not cause disk I/O to be slower? There is no such thing as a free lunch. But please do prove me wrong.

I will say this though, when MSE was first released it definitely caused file access to be slower in Explorer compared to Avira and was the main reason I stopped using it. This behavior was confirmed by other users in the anti-spyware Usenet group so I was not imagining it either as I know some of you are now going to try and claim.
 
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ChRoNo16 said:
When I dont use Security essentials, I use AVG- It isnt great, but I use it for most of my virtual machines since it isnt really resource intensive.
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No thanks, it was AVG that made me move to Avira. I updated to Avira2012 today on another PC and had no issues with that upgrade so am quite certain now that it was RadeonPro causing the false positive on this PC.

But this PC has now been switched over to Avast and will stay that way, which has an easy method to disable realtime protection from the systemtray and will use when I game no matter what anyone here thinks. BTW, even the best AV products only have about a 35% detection rate so don't think you are all safe and secure just because you use an AV product.
 
Gnasher said:
even the best AV products only have about a 35% detection rate so don't think you are all safe and secure just because you use an AV product.
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I'm pretty damn safe and secure. I wrap it up.

Seriously, use what you want and enjoy life. I use MSE, game like a boss, and have no complaints.

On another note...I'm guessing stupidity & infections rates have a high correlation.
 
Gnasher said:
BTW, even the best AV products only have about a 35% detection rate so don't think you are all safe and secure just because you use an AV product.
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No. Most AVs have 90%+ on retroactive tests. Avira has the highest and is usually 99.8-99.9%. Proactive however usually top out at 50-60 percent.
 
Sure it is, I was being generous with 35%.

http://blog.triumfant.com/2009/08/20/antivirus-detection-rates-it-is-clear-you-need-a-plan-b/

"The detection rates from this test are eye opening. The average daily detection rate for the 13 AV products ranged from 16% to 44%, with the average of about 29%. Good hit rate if you are a baseball player, but not great for an endpoint protection tool."

Still waiting for these articles that show realtime protection does not negate performance in any way.
 
Gnasher said:
If it is so simple then why doesn't Microsoft just make it a simple option from the systemtray instead of having to open the app to do it? That is my complaint about it and not because I needed you to be a smartass and tell me how to do it.

As for real time protection not costing resources, show me these benchmarks instead of just claiming it makes no dif. I've read similar articles and there is no AV app in the world that does not cost resources. How can it be checking files in real time and not cause disk I/O to be slower? There is no such thing as a free lunch. But please do prove me wrong.
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You said it isn't easy...I still consider that easy. You must live at home and still have mommy pour your fruit loops into a bowl for you because opening the cereal box is a major difficult task for you?

Plenty of AV apps require you to bring up the GUI in order to get to the disable real time scan function. Yes there are some that only require a single right click in the systray too.

Show performance stats. Really? REALLY? You can't spent a few moments with Google?

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/81194-gaming-performance-versus-antivirus-software/8
As it shows with some intensive fairly current games...there really isn't an appreciable impact.

and a bunch of lessons at http://lmgtfy.com/

Back in the dial up days...yeah, if your antivirus went for its weekly update while you were playing online..it killed your low ping.
And if you have some weak celery based 2 gig of RAM underpowered rig..well....shouldn't be gaming on that anyways. Todays systems with their true multi core CPUs...abundant system RAM, hard drives with excellent performance....as that above article shows you...antivirus software won't bog down your system while gaming like many think it does.
 
Gnasher said:
. BTW, even the best AV products only have about a 35% detection rate so don't think you are all safe and secure just because you use an AV product.
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Lets try a trusted neutral site that does real world testing.

http://av-comparatives.org/
Bring up the comparison articles..any of them.
You'll see they range in the 92-99% area.
You can dig deeper and find some oddball tests they did with AV clients doing scans of current threats using 30 day old definitions...and even then you won't find them at a low 30% across the board.
Or even if you look at dynamics tests against current evolving malware threats such as rogue/fake alerts/scareware...you'll see they're not nearly that low...mostly above 65%....similar test to that joke of an article you posted..but using a well explained approach (unlike the article you linked)

But we all know (or should) that keeping your antivirus effective it still up to you and complimenting it by keeping up with your Microsoft updates and web player updates (java, pdf reader, flash etc)...since those are the vectors being used now to infect your system...not the OS so much anymore.
 
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YeOldeStonecat said:
You said it isn't easy...I still consider that easy. You must live at home and still have mommy pour your fruit loops into a bowl for you because opening the cereal box is a major difficult task for you?

Plenty of AV apps require you to bring up the GUI in order to get to the disable real time scan function. Yes there are some that only require a single right click in the systray too.
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Come at me bro'. I could tell you are an antagonist from your very first post to this thread.

No AV app, besides MSE, I have used has ever required me to open the app to disable realtime protection and I have used quite a few so I think it is safe to say you are FOS. It's not about needing my mommy to do it for me it is about convenience. But once again Microsoft falsely thinks security is holding your hand and making an easy thing to do an annoyance. Just like UAC is.

I already said I did the research in the past and there was a disk I/O hit on all of them. Your article is shit because it tests frame rates and not disk I/O performance. Disk I/O performance affects loading of data speed and not frame rates. NEXT!
 
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YeOldeStonecat said:
But we all know (or should) that keeping your antivirus effective it still up to you and complimenting it by keeping up with your Microsoft updates and web player updates (java, pdf reader, flash etc)...since those are the vectors being used now to infect your system...not the OS so much anymore.
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They didn't run the tests over a number of days as the one I posted did. All they did was test against a known set of viruses. NEXT!
 
Gnasher said:
Come at me bro'. I could tell you are an antagonist from your very first post to this thread.

No AV app, besides MSE, I have used has ever required me to open the app to disable realtime protection and I have used quite a few so I think it is safe to say you are FOS.
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LMAO!
You know how many different brands I resell and support in the SMB/Corporate environment? More brands than the home freebie and 90 day trial OEMs you get on your home eMachines.
 
Gnasher said:
I already said I did the research in the past and there was a disk I/O hit on all of them. Your article is shit because it tests frame rates and not disk I/O performance. Disk I/O performance affects loading of data speed and not frame rates. NEXT!
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Your turn...show us the link(s) of tests done on contemporary good gaming hardware with current games. With todays multi-core processors and better grade SATA drives with higher TCQ. Not underpowered celeries/durons with PATA drives and inadequate system RAM.

On the public game servers I used to build and run, I'd put the game directory in the exclusion ist..and tune the real time protection to scan only a standard list of file type extensions, not "all extensions"...due to heavier loads on a game server busy serving 3-6 or more games to a couple of hundred people at once. But for a single client these days on even a moderately powered game rig...not any appreciable difference.
 
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2094647

5 - Do you run security software?

Be it a firewall or antivirus or some combination, it can RUIN your game experience if it is interfering with the game while it is running. We strongly recommend adding RO 2 binaries and folder structure to any allowed/ignore lists respectively. Especially if you have active real time security on. This is known to kill performance as it will be trying to check every packet and every file the game uses in real time.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
LMAO!
You know how many different brands I resell and support in the SMB/Corporate environment? More brands than the home freebie and 90 day trial OEMs you get on your home eMachines.
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Well, there is your problem right there, you are coming at this from a business person's perspective and not a gamers perspective. I run high end demanding games and not fucking Microsoft Office. :p

Why are you belittling Kaspersky, NOD32, Avira (this is security experts choice on Usenet), AVG, Avast, etc.? What's this "super duper" AV you run and recommend to your corporate sponges?
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Your turn...show us the link(s) of tests done on contemporary good gaming hardware with current games. With todays multi-core processors and better grade SATA drives with higher TCQ. Not underpowered celeries/durons with PATA drives and inadequate system RAM.

On the public game servers I used to build and run, I'd put the game directory in the exclusion ist..and tune the real time protection to scan only a standard list of file type extensions, not "all extensions"...due to heavier loads on a game server busy serving 3-6 or more games to a couple of hundred people at once. But for a single client these days on even a moderately powered game rig...not any appreciable difference.
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It was a couple of years ago I read that specific article so I doubt I can find it again and I know you people will just try and disparage it anway so there is no point in arguing further.

Still, wtf is it to you loons if I choose to disable realtime protection during gaming sessions or not anyway? There is very little risk of getting a virus playing a game so there is no need for realtime protection.This has nothing to do with my original post at all. I simply said why I don't use MSE and my reason is perfectly valid. But, one final point. If there is no performance hit of any kind with realtime protection then why would they have the option to disable it? BECAUSE THERE IS!
 
Gnasher said:
Come at me bro'.
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Gnasher said:
you people
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Gnasher said:
wtf is it to you loons
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Why all the hate? So you have a problem with RO2...then follow the long ass process to get it fixed. It shouldn't be that difficult and in most cases it's not. Sounds like more of a problem with RO2 than anything else...In my experience, the reason why there is an option for disabling it is probably due to software installations/hardware at times, etc. You have the problem with this whole AV thing, not us. We simply offered suggestions. Most people are around here to help and your attitude really demonstrates that you simply don't want help and would rather argue about it. /out.
 
lol @ Ye Olde being call an antagonist. Really lol'd at 'come at me bro'.

Seriously though, if you're spending more time updating/repairing/securing your PC than you do using it, you're doing something wrong.
 
My original post was just me venting about Avira throwing up another false positive and wasting my time and not about which AV I should use. I never asked for any help and I never said I had any issue with RO2 either. That was to show that it is not recommended to use AV realtime protection when running the game and why. Enough of this contradictory BS. I will go vent on Usenet from now on where I can tell condescending people what I really think of them. Come join me at alt.privacy.spyware for some real fun. :)
 
Gnasher said:
I've used MSE twice now and I don't like the fact I can't easily disable realtime protection from the system tray icon for when I play games. When it was first released it slowed down disk access more than Avira too but don't know if that is true now. Avira is very light on resources and was easy to disable realtime protection. Avast makes it easy to disable too. Not MSE though, they don't want users to be able to disable it easily.
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either you got one hell of an old system or something is wrong if mse slowed down games.
 
I never said that! I never even tested MSE with games. I said it made accessing files in Explorer slower. That was confirmed by other people on Usenet too so it wasn't just me. I was the first to report it though and this was when MSE was first released so maybe it is ok now. But I don't want to use MSE and I have already said why so until Microsoft adds a right click menu to disable realtime protection I won't be using it.

There is nothing wrong with my PC and my main rig is quite good! My comments are in relation to AV apps in general and not strictly MSE. Enough already!
 
the way you wrote your response, saying you cant disable it while you play games and that it slows down disk times in the next sentance, made me associate the 2, otherwise why would you need ti disable it while you play games.....
 
Gnasher said:
I never said that! I never even tested MSE with games. I said it made accessing files in Explorer slower. That was confirmed by other people on Usenet too so it wasn't just me. I was the first to report it though and this was when MSE was first released so maybe it is ok now. But I don't want to use MSE and I have already said why so until Microsoft adds a right click menu to disable realtime protection I won't be using it.

There is nothing wrong with my PC and my main rig is quite good! My comments are in relation to AV apps in general and not strictly MSE. Enough already!
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You're still doing it wrong if you NEED to disable AV while gaming...
 
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