Which AV & Firewall for win 10?

Whach

Whach

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Dec 22, 2011
Messages
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What are you guys /gals using? I was thinking about using Comodo and Avast, but wanted to see your choices are too.

A new windows install always feels refreshingly quick without 3rd party AV and Firewalls.
 
I use Microsoft Security Essentials on Windows 7 pretty much since the day it first appeared in private beta testing long ago, never had issues at all. I routinely "double up" and do a HouseCall (from TrendMicro) and NOD32 (from Eset) active scans using their appropriate tools. I'll even go so far on rare occasions and do a full scan using HitMan Pro and Malwarebytes Antimalware - in years of just using MSE itself and scripts for my browser (Firefox) I've yet to even get a single tracking cookie get left behind by anything.

So far so good. :D

I can't imagine that using Windows Defender (which is basically MSE for Windows 10 with some improvements) can be worse but I do understand that some folks prefer to stick with their tried and true 3rd party alternatives. I used to use NOD32 for years but when MSE came out I switched over and I haven't had one instance of virus/trojan/worm or malware infections since.
 
i am using avast but it has been getting pretty annoying as far as ads go.
 
Whach said:
I agree. At this point, I'm willing to try something new.
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honestly if eset still makes a half ways decent version of nod 32 i would jump to that not too expensive i don't exactly mind paying for a good one but avast has been good to me for i would say 5-6 years now... I have a 75% off coupon on one machine for having avast installed for 880+ days...

I am just getting tired of the let me speed up your pc or you have this many junk files here have a coupon have you tried avast for android ect
 
MSE/Windows Defender for everything I set up .. but I also use Adblock Plus (whitelisting this site of course) and Ghostery as add-ons in my browsers .. OpenDNS free account to do content blocking all sitting behind an Atom setup running Untangle .. I can't remember the last time any of my computers on my home network got infected with anything .. :)

I also use SpywareBlaster (update and apply all protection), and the older version of Spybot S&D (update and immunize.. I don't use Teatimer though)

if I get a computer from somebody, I'll run CCleaner and then ADWcleaner .. reboot then run Malware-bytes . maybe run ComboFIX and another scan with Spybot and then apply the above mentioned add-ons to their browser(s)..

I wouldn't run a 3rd party software firewall ..
 
For free AV's I've been recommending Avira - it's been scoring pretty highly on the AV testing sites (e.g. AVComparatives.org).

MSE shouldn't be used anymore IMO at all, as it's pretty much been abandoned by MS.

That being said, I don't run an AV on my machine at all besides stock Defender. I run Flashblock and uBlock (prefer it over AdBlock Plus because they're not allowing ads through their whitelist like ABP does, and it's lighter on CPU/memory) in Chrome, and FlashBlock+uBlock+NoScript in FireFox.
 
For firewall, Windows built-in one that can be configured via local group policy to freeze out unwanted/unnecessary changes. See this thread: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1041615440

For antimalware: malwarebytes.org paid edition. I used to cruise along without any at all. But lately I've just seen too many legit sites that I visit get compromised (big, reliable, corporate sites). Never visited one while it's been hosting malware. But there's a first time for everything and I'd rather not trust to luck completely.
 
MSE has been horrible late please stop recommending it. Your thinking is outdated. Its detection track record is bad.

I use avast but as with others I am sick and tired of their spam now. Looking to try something new. I left avira a long time ago because of the spam so I am curious if they are better now.
 
rudy said:
MSE has been horrible late please stop recommending it. Your thinking is outdated. Its detection track record is bad.
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Testing things in a lab is one thing and not indicative of actual real world performance I'd respond. If I took my current Windows 7 installation that's been using MSE for years now as the only antivirus and malware protection (aside from using script controls with my browser) and scan it using a variety of other products (which I did last week since I do it regularly) I end up finding Jack Shit© basically so, I don't know what else can be done in terms of protection.

If there's nothing that any current tool can find if I choose to do scans with those products, and MSE has been the only product used up to that point (minus the script controls as noted), then exactly where is MSE being faulted?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? :D
 
rudy said:
MSE has been horrible late please stop recommending it. Your thinking is outdated. Its detection track record is bad.

I use avast but as with others I am sick and tired of their spam now. Looking to try something new. I left avira a long time ago because of the spam so I am curious if they are better now.
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Yea, but MSE supplemented with Malwarebytes is still pretty good...and no ads.
 
For free antivirus Panda and Bitdefender are the best currently. Though the former comes with toolbar so be mindful what you click when installing and latter requires you to register a profile.

I used to use Comodo Firewall but it does not work for W10 yet. Currently I use Private Firewall as alternative, but jury is still out how good it is.
 
Avast and Avira is what I use on all my systems. Bitdefender seems to be good as well. Will never understand people still recommending MSE given how poorly it performs in third party testing.
 
Sp33dFr33k said:
Avast and Avira is what I use on all my systems. Bitdefender seems to be good as well. Will never understand people still recommending MSE given how poorly it performs in third party testing.
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I've used both and I was last using Panda before going back to MSE. All the 3rd party AV are too obtrusive for me. Avira gets far too many false positives and Avast is too obtrusive, Panda is not all that good any more either and are in financial trouble last I read. I'll stick with MSE + Malwarebytes + Spybot S&D + Malwarebytes browser anti-exploit.
 
rezerekted said:
I've used both and I was last using Panda before going back to MSE. All the 3rd party AV are too obtrusive for me. Avira gets far too many false positives and Avast is too obtrusive, Panda is not all that good any more either and are in financial trouble last I read. I'll stick with MSE + Malwarebytes + Spybot S&D + Malwarebytes browser anti-exploit.
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How is Panda not good anymore? Last I checked it still scored very highly in lab tests. Other than for the optional "security feature" toolbar its quite set-it-and-forget-it kind of AV too.

MSE may work decently if you supplement it with anti adware/malware stuff, immunizers, and adblockers and noscript but why use something subpar when you have much better choices out there? If you get too many false positives you can often adjust the heurestics to reduce them, or you can manually set the program to ask first what to do before acting and permanently ignore the file you know to be clean.
 
No one here uses Norton Internet Security? I get it free with Comcast, up to seven systems, but I would not use it if it were not very highly rated.
 
MS Defender + EMET 5.* + Crytoprevent + Unchecky (in case I forget a tickbox)

Works just fine. I run scans with offline scanners and clean as a whistle.

However, the best AV is being an aware user.


I clean a lot of PCs as part of my job and there is not one AV suite that has yet to hold firm with the average user. They all get beaten. So go with the cheapest if you know what you are doing.

To be honest the only real threat out there are the Cryptolocker variants and Cryptoprevent looks after them. On a side note MSE is very good at picking up the Crypto viruses whereas others such as MBAM are pretty poor at cleaning them up.
 
x509 said:
No one here uses Norton Internet Security? I get it free with Comcast, up to seven systems, but I would not use it if it were not very highly rated.
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I find it to intrusive. Tries to take over your pc and i have seen it legit destroy computers once it gets uninstalled, heaps of corrupt files and registry entries.

Personally i was using mse on win 7 with malwarebytes pro and adblock but just before installing win 10 my origin account got compromised and i was banned for suspicious activity , mse found zero viruses and neither did malwarebytes, i ran eset nod32 trial and found over 100 viruses lol all attached to my origin install. Good stuff.. so needless to say mse is out for me now.

Going with eset nod32 and malwarebytes pro on win 10 although i have lost a bit of faith in malwarebytes as well given the above situation. I also tried the kaspersy suite on win 7 and would have gone with that just ahead of eset i think but it didnt want to install on windows 10 so it made the choice for me. Ftr i have always been against paid antivirus thanks to norton putting me off early on and decent free alternatives being available but my tune has changed. Eset seems pretty good to me.
 
x509 said:
No one here uses Norton Internet Security? I get it free with Comcast, up to seven systems, but I would not use it if it were not very highly rated.
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Maybe Norton has improved but at one point if its existence it managed to irreversably ruin its reputation and nobody wants to even touch it anymore.
 
Mboner1 said:
I find it to intrusive. Tries to take over your pc and i have seen it legit destroy computers once it gets uninstalled, heaps of corrupt files and registry entries.
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I don't mess with the built-in uninstaller on any Symantec product.

Norton Removal Tool for the consumer-based Norton tools and CleanWipe for Symantec Endpoint Protection.

Gets rid of everything Symantec related, files, registry entries, etc.
 
I install Norton on plenty of system for my clients, never seen any issue with it. It can be resource intensive but I haven't seen it have too much of an impact on users systems.
 
MaZa said:
How is Panda not good anymore? Last I checked it still scored very highly in lab tests. Other than for the optional "security feature" toolbar its quite set-it-and-forget-it kind of AV too.

MSE may work decently if you supplement it with anti adware/malware stuff, immunizers, and adblockers and noscript but why use something subpar when you have much better choices out there? If you get too many false positives you can often adjust the heurestics to reduce them, or you can manually set the program to ask first what to do before acting and permanently ignore the file you know to be clean.
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I don't remember the url but Panda was not rated highly in the comparison I read. It used to be good but not so much now.

I've used Avira many times and I have to tell it to ignore too many files every time, it became annoying and don't want it, you have to train it in two places to ignore files and not just one too.. I am fine with MSE and the other tools I use. I don't care if it is not as good as Avast etc, I don't want annoying crap on my PC. MSE has never given me a false positive, never ever.
 
So far:

AV:
I've installed Avast for now as its done the job so far on my win 7 install for years. I'll still keep an eye out for an alternative free product. As for MSE, definitely not using it - sure its lightweight, but absolutely not up to scratch as it has hardly been updated, its too obsolete imo. I dont see the point of using only old partial protection

Firewall:
As for a firewall, Comodo isn't win 10 ready yet, so i'm trying out GlassWire. As far as I can see, it still uses the native windows firewall, with more info. i dont really know if its good enough - what do you think?

Misc.
For uninstalling software, I've always used RevoUninstaller. I think its fantastic, has enabled me to keep my win 7 install fresh for about 3yrs!!! it performs a normal uninstall, then scans for all the leftover crap. Hasn't missed a thing. I'll try it on win 10 to see if it's still compatible - hopefully it is.
 
rezerekted said:
Yea, but MSE supplemented with Malwarebytes is still pretty good...and no ads.
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This. Plus almost all those "Free" AV's are some serious CLUSTERFUCK programs, bloated, and ads left and right. MSE is still basic and not complicating what its doing. It's like a Norton/McAfee curse where every AV is doomed to repeat itself. It's fuckin embarrassing.


Also just because it doesn't have a 99% 0-day detection rate doesn't mean jack shit if you're a power user that knows what they're doing. Sorry, but some of those reporting methods are seriously overblown. Strangely if you look at the historical numbers percentage wise what MSE is doing now was about the same percentage as it was doing when it was highly recommended 4 years ago.
 
Tiberian said:
Testing things in a lab is one thing and not indicative of actual real world performance I'd respond. If I took my current Windows 7 installation that's been using MSE for years now as the only antivirus and malware protection (aside from using script controls with my browser) and scan it using a variety of other products (which I did last week since I do it regularly) I end up finding Jack Shit© basically so, I don't know what else can be done in terms of protection.

If there's nothing that any current tool can find if I choose to do scans with those products, and MSE has been the only product used up to that point (minus the script controls as noted), then exactly where is MSE being faulted?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? :D
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I could make the same claim for not running any antivirus at all due to safe browsing habbits so your argument isn't very useful. MSE rates very poorly in standardized tests which are more informative than anecdotes.
 
MSE on desktop, ESET on server (only because it was free).

I have Malwarebytes installed, too.

But, I haven't been infected in a long time. Probably due to luck, safe browsing and luck.
 
Whach said:
What are you guys /gals using? I was thinking about using Comodo and Avast, but wanted to see your choices are too.
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I do this. And also have Malwarebytes, SuperAntiSpyware, & Peerblock running in the background. And Noscript in the browser with a custom whitelist.

I find them each catching/blocking different things at times.
 
I used to remove malware for a living.. and also fix problems with customers AV apps. I could churn out over 20 pcs a day with various threats and "security" apps.

I can wholeheartedly say that Bitdefender and Vipre are terrible AV apps that can be worse than even McAfee when they break. And they break often, causing performance issues/crashes and can be very hard to remove.

Norton has come a LONG way, but I still do not use it on my personal Windows boxes because of it's past. I would recommend it to a regular home user any day over 95% of the competition. In fact it's installed on my parent's PC now.

My recommendations that have been proven to work well with 10 so far:
Total security if you're paranoid: Kaspersky 2016
Great security with almost no performance impact: Webroot (My personal choice)
Best freebie: Avast. Sadly.

(IMO, IME, ETC)
 
Been using Avast for over 10 years on multiple computers without a single issue.
The pay version adds some extra features if you want more security.

As for 10, using Avast and the built in MS firewall, no issues.

Kapersky does have the highest rate for catching virus's so if you want the best paid program
that would be the choice.
 
rudy said:
I could make the same claim for not running any antivirus at all due to safe browsing habbits so your argument isn't very useful. MSE rates very poorly in standardized tests which are more informative than anecdotes.
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I go places online that you wouldn't dream of touching with a 10 foot pole behind 7 proxies and a few hardware firewalls so, it's far from being an anecdote in my experience. Suffice to say, just using "safe browsing habits" alone isn't very useful in protecting a given installation either.

Might as well people to use "Common Sense 2015" which tends to get tossed around all too frequently. The Windows platform is a target, plain and simple, and because of that the end user must take it upon themselves to do what they can to protect their installations - "safe browsing habits" will get you nowhere in the long run because not all the problems out there come from just browsing.
 
Sp33dFr33k said:
I install Norton on plenty of system for my clients, never seen any issue with it. It can be resource intensive but I haven't seen it have too much of an impact on users systems.
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I'm the guy who started this sub-thread. The main impact on my system is that it stops any malware from getting into my system, including drive-by downloads.
 
Tiberian said:
I go places online that you wouldn't dream of touching with a 10 foot pole behind 7 proxies and a few hardware firewalls so, it's far from being an anecdote in my experience. Suffice to say, just using "safe browsing habits" alone isn't very useful in protecting a given installation either.

Might as well people to use "Common Sense 2015" which tends to get tossed around all too frequently. The Windows platform is a target, plain and simple, and because of that the end user must take it upon themselves to do what they can to protect their installations - "safe browsing habits" will get you nowhere in the long run because not all the problems out there come from just browsing.
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So true. Some people don't realize how much crap is out there and hidden in the most basic things people would think are otherwise safe.
 
rive22 said:
I do this. And also have Malwarebytes, SuperAntiSpyware, & Peerblock running in the background. And Noscript in the browser with a custom whitelist.

I find them each catching/blocking different things at times.
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Wait, did you get Comodo working in win10? or were you talking about win7
 
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