Which AV Soft best for running w/o installing first?

G

gibber

Gawd
Joined
Jul 16, 2007
Messages
759
Hey,
Tired of the resource hogging of the various antivirus software programs I've tried. I realized I don't need to have it installed and running constantly, if, I can just run it when I want to scan a file.

So, is there a free AV soft that I can use that way (without "installing" it)? I know that most any of the AV softs out there could be made to not run at startup, then you can run them later, but, they're obviously not designed to work that way (at least the ones I've tried so far).

Is there something like X-Cleaner Micro that's has full AV definitions?
 
if you want to do that type of virus 'scanning' just use one of the free online scanners.
 
A whole connection of AV engines scanning files at once...best individual file scan you can get...period..as it uses a whole fleet of scanning engines on the files
http://virusscan.jotti.org/

Another file scanning source...
http://www.virustotal.com/

Full system scans...
Kaspersky...one of the best
http://usa.kaspersky.com/products_services/free-virus-scanner.php

Eset NOD32...also one of the best (actually a very light product to install on your PC)
http://www.eset.com/onlinescan/

Trend Micros Housecall
http://www.trendsecure.com/portal/en-US/tools/security_tools/housecall

Bitdefender
http://www.bitdefender.com/
 
dandragonrage said:
Kaspersky does not even compare to NOD32 or Avira. It is not "one of the best." See www.av-comparatives.org
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I'm very well versed in that site..for many years...Kaspersky has done very well. Earlier on it didn't do so well in the heuristics only based tests....(which IMO isn't the first thing to consider)..but it's done very well..exceptionally well...with definitions, and they're up in the top rankings with heuristics lately.

Add to that...experience in seeing first hand....on many machines....and hearing other experience IT consultants express their praise for the product.
 
Might want to read the most current test, which it sucked in. And it is consistently rated as having a slow scanning speed.

As far as what IT consultants say, I couldn't care less. Most of them like Symantec or McCrappy. I installed NOD32 on some PCs at my work and a few users said it made no difference in speed, but a few said it was a drastic improvement over Symantec. I witnessed some of the machines have this improvement.
 
Nod32 - best paid

Avira - Best free

That's how I preech it to those who ask. No way around it. Nod32 is a well programmed peice of software. same for Avira.
 
dandragonrage said:
Might want to read the most current test, which it sucked in. And it is consistently rated as having a slow scanning speed.

As far as what IT consultants say, I couldn't care less. Most of them like Symantec or McCrappy. I installed NOD32 on some PCs at my work and a few users said it made no difference in speed, but a few said it was a drastic improvement over Symantec. I witnessed some of the machines have this improvement.
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That's just a heuristics test...to be taken with a grain of salt. Kaspersky leans on definition updates...it updates hourly..that's many times per day. That's how their model works.

And yes NOD32 is fantastic..far superior to SymantSuck.. I don't need selling there...it's what I use the most...I'm a gold partner with them. ;) Although their FP failure with word docs this past week pissed me off badly.
 
Personally I prefer Sophos for for a paid solution but they don't offer a personal edition (atleast not to my knowledge).
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
That's just a heuristics test...to be taken with a grain of salt. Kaspersky leans on definition updates...it updates hourly..that's many times per day. That's how their model works.

And yes NOD32 is fantastic..far superior to SymantSuck.. I don't need selling there...it's what I use the most...I'm a gold partner with them. ;) Although their FP failure with word docs this past week pissed me off badly.
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Yeah, the false positives thing was a PITA. At least they had it fixed relatively quickly.:confused:
 
Private Citizen said:
Yeah, the false positives thing was a PITA. At least they had it fixed relatively quickly.:confused:
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Yeah..but when one has several hundred different clients network running on NOD....well, I was very busy trying to get a TON of network stuff done at a summer camp....and my cell phone was ringing off the hook with clients screaming about this one. Pissed me off bad.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Yeah..but when one has several hundred different clients network running on NOD....well, I was very busy trying to get a TON of network stuff done at a summer camp....and my cell phone was ringing off the hook with clients screaming about this one. Pissed me off bad.
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Call Eset and see if they can do anything for you about it. (I'm not saying they will or anything - just a thought.)
 
Good job to everybody posting in the second half of the thread. You folks did an incredible job completely ignoring the OP's question and making this another AV pissing contest.
 
fss69 said:
Good job to everybody posting in the second half of the thread. You folks did an incredible job completely ignoring the OP's question and making this another AV pissing contest.
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Good answer. I'm sure the OP finds it very helpful.
 
If you bothered to actually read the thread, you'd see I made a USEFUL suggestion on the third reply.
 
I took someones advice here and decided to give Avira another go. I used it before but forgot about it after a I had reformatted.So I downloaded Avira like three months ago and have been using it. I love it. I was bouncing between a few before but always landing back at Nod32. I was bored and installed Nod32 and Avira at the same time and proceeded to download a few well known virus. I have to say that Avira seems to jump on them a lot quicker than Nod32 does. I don't know if it's because the order I installed them or something but I actually like Avira better then Nod32 at the moment. I'm just giving my experience, not saying it means anything important
 
To Gibber, Sorry, I kinda ignored the purpose of the thread.

I know you said that you don't want to install an anti-virus prog but I think you should give Avira Anti-Vir a try. It's very resource friendly. It's very easy to disable but not completely shut down.
 
Follow up:

Yes many of the replies did not answer my question, but, I guess they don't hurt.

To explain my orig. question further - let's say I was downloading some freeware from some place like FileHippo and I didn't know if I could trust it to be Virus free. I would want to run an AntiVirus program which would temporarily sit in the background protecting my PC while I install and/or run the program I just downloaded from File Hippo. Once I saw it was all clean, then I would exit the AV program.

Now, maybe there isn't exactly a good solution for that scenario. Maybe the only option (without installing) is running an AV program which can run a scan on a file/drive/folders of my choice, but not provide the kind of "background protection" that you get from an installed AV?

Currently I'm going with Microsoft Security Essentials for a couple reasons 1) it's free 2) it doesn't nag me 3) I THINK it doesn't slow down my PC? I haven't noticed it slowing down my PC, and it hasn't bothered me yet. I might try some online FPS gaming with it disabled to see if it seems faster?

Answers to other posts:

Avira: I tried it, I actually experienced it's superior detection, it found infected files that other AV softs had missed. It seemed to not slow the PC down as much as AVG also. BUT - I couldn't stand the daily nag screen that pops up at least once a day, sometimes more.

NOD32: I've heard lots of people recommend this one. Might have liked to try it, but didn't want to pay or use a pirated version.

Sophos: we used this at the company where I had my last UNIX job, it seemed OK (got downsized, poor economy).

fss69 said:
Good job to everybody posting in the second half of the thread. You folks did an incredible job completely ignoring the OP's question and making this another AV pissing contest.
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Hey, thanks for getting my back, without insulting any one particular person.
 
First off, Fss69 is absolutely correct, CureIt! is a fantastic piece of software. Hitman Pro 3.5 is also very good.

That being said, there's NO reason not to have a resident AV anymore. If your computer is getting slowed by having one on there, look to your hardware as the problem, not the software.

Gibber, if you want a light, excellent resident AV, use Avast or MSE. Both are excellent, but I prefer Avast. Especially when v5 comes out.
 
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AVG has been going downhill quickly since version 8. That's when I switched to Avira.

As for the Avira nag screen; there is a way to disable it, just not within Avira.

I've been very happy with MSE, for the most part. It tends to hog resources when you download a lot though, as it scans the files as they're downloading (an issue I did not have with Avira).

as for what you're looking for; sure, you can use just about any AV app. Unfortunately you can't just "close the app"
since anything with a real-time scanning engine, they run as services. So you would have to open up your services, re-enable them, start them, do the scanning, stop them, then disable. Too much of a hassle.
 
Any AV software worth it's salt isn't going to cause you any noticeable performance loss. NOD32, Avira, G-data, etc, etc. Unless you have some POS computer :p
 
I heard Avira came out with updates that now change that disallowrun (avnotify which flashes the nag screen), so each update defeats any disallowrun you do. Anyone found that to hold true?
 
Every informed person here loves it. I wouldn't run anything else on my Win 7 boxes.
 
Stanley Pain said:
Any AV software worth it's salt isn't going to cause you any noticeable performance loss. NOD32, Avira, G-data, etc, etc. Unless you have some POS computer :p
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Well, I don't mean during general use, but, sometimes when I play a FPS I don't like the little bit of lag that AV programs seem to add.

entropism said:
First off, Fss69 is absolutely correct, CureIt! is a fantastic piece of software. Hitman Pro 3.5 is also very good..
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I googled to checkout those and found something amusing: the translation for the discription of Hitman Pro here is absolutely terrible:

http://www.techspot.com/downloads/1278-hitman-pro.html
 
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