I have heard of folks using Avast + AVG or Avast + BitDefender. Does anyone know if Avast can be used alongside Windows Live One Care, or is One Care as inhospitable as Norton and McAfee?
I used to have McAfee and knew it didn’t “play well” with other AV’s. Now that I have registered with Avast, I want to exeriment a little bit. Do you think ANY combination of 2 AV’s is safe?
Avast + AVG without considerable tweaking of AVG installation doesn’t work with avast. avast and Bitdefender free is fine because that is an on-demand scanner.
MS would probably have you believe that it will be fine with other AVs and security software and there really is only one way to find out. However, isn’t Live One Care still in beta ?. If so I wouldn’t like to test this on a production system. Isn’t live one care an extension of windows defender, etc. that worked with avast, how much further live one care goes I don’t know.
Generally it isn’t advised to have two resident, on-access scanners on the same system. So there are a number of on-demand AVs like Bitdefender that should be fine provided you pause standard shield before you run the on-demand scan of the other AV.
By all accounts it is possible to get AntiVir to work with avast but it entails some tweaking and renaming of some antivir files. I don’t recall what they are but a forum search for antivir and avast should return some info.
One Care is no longer beta. Windows Defender is only 1 component. It also has a resident AV and firewall (which cannot be separated) and a computer tune up and document back up software. It all merges with Windows as Microsoft services and takes over the Windows Security Center by “Group Policy.” It DOES provice an option to put programs on an exclusion list for the resident AV, and you can turn off the resident shield (but it complains and alerts by turning Red).
If I tried to combine it with Avast, I guess it would only work if I could custom install Avast as only an on demand scanner. If you turn off the on access AV protection in One Care for too long, it considers itself at risk and produces alerts plus error entries in the Windows Event Viewer. BTW - I’m not committed to using One Care. I only dowloaded it for a free trial to see how it functions. I had to uninstall Avant before I could install it.
For the experiment, I would need to use Avast as an on demand scanner only. Is it possible to install it that way? Also, I had not used Avast long enough to determine if it also has an exclusions list. Does it?
My only reason for mentioning the windows defender was because it had resident on-access function so if that worked, hopefully the AV element of live one care might work with avast.
The problem is avast isn’t designed to be used as an on-demand scanner and would require severe tweaking to make it do so, which I think losing the more valuable providers would cripple avast making it less effective, web shield, p2p shield, Internet Messaging provider, Internet Mail provider, etc. which intercept prior to infected file being saved to disk.
Now if live one care doesn’t offer these functions you would I believe be less well protected by crippling avast in this way.
You would effectively have to terminate all providers and stop and set all avast services to manual and I have no idea how you would overcome the drivers loaded by avast nor the legacy registry keys.
OK In that case I won’t try that experiment. After I finish checking out One Care, I will uninstall it and reinstall Avast by itself.
BTW - I use AOL dialup and AOL email. I have Windows messenger and Outlook Express disabled because I do not use them. I also do not use MSN messenger or AIM. The only IM I use is the one native within the AOL 9.0 client software. I also use web based email (hotmail and yahoo).
Which of the features of Avast would it be safe to disable using my current configuration? I don’t think I need to use all of them, do I? If possible, I want to lighten the load on my system.
Well the AOL AIM looks like that is covered in the IM provider. If you don’t use P2P software you can safely terminate that. The Internet Mail provider even if you don’t use pop3 email (web based or AOHell) I believe should leave enabled and the sensitivity set to High, it uses very little in the way of resources and if not in use no load. What it can provide is notification of a spambot trojan on your system sending multiple identical emails (spam) using its own smtp email client; though I unsure how this would get through AOHel email.
My basic provider list for you would be Standard Shield, Network Shield, Web Shield, Internet Mail and Internet Messaging. all of these combined are relatively light on resources providing a good balance between performance and protection.
Thank you for your recommendations. At least now I know that you are familiar with AOHell!!! Did I understand correctly that the normal (or medium or whatever it’s called) would be best for these shields, or should I go with High just on the mail shield? Or should I try if possible to use High on all of them? I would like to run Windows Defender or Ewido resident along with Avast, but I need to watch my resources. I also have Spysweeper, but the new version 5.0 causes my CPU’s to stay at 100% as long as it’s not disabled. I am working with Webroot on a solution to that problem via emails. Despite our experiments so far, Spysweeper seems to be playing havoc on my OS. The Spysweeper problem was occurring no matter whether I had Avast, McAfee or One Care installed. Once I get that matter resolved, I will probably be reinstalling Avast. I still have the McAfee subscription and I plan to use its firewall as long as it is compatible. I considered Outpost but it’s unsupported and also Comodo, but I hear it is a resource hog and has uninstall problems. Do you think McAfee firewall would be suitable or would I do better with Comodo (in terms of resources only, not protection).
Normal is the default setting and for most of the shields that provides a good compromise between protection and performance. However, the Internet mail needs to be at High for the option to check for Multiple mass mailings.
You can see the spec. of my system in my signature and I’m also on dial-up and I also have the web shield on High as well.
Ewido works well with avast and I would pick that over windows defender in a heartbeat.
Whilst you await the resolution with spysweeper you could use these programs the first two are on-demand scanners so no resource issue until you use it, the third is a passive blocking tool and only has resource usage when you check for updates.
My only concern with McAfee firewall is if it is part of a suite including the AV and how you would go about removing that element.
There are others, Jetico, Sunbelt Kerio, etc.
See some firewall tests for comparison, some are freeware but many are paid for versions http://www.firewallleaktester.com/tests.php. Also see http://www.thefreecountry.com/security/firewalls.shtml
Thanks again. I already have those programs and only use the passive immunizations in them. Regarding the McAfee firewall, I believe it will be OK. I have the firewall on a separate CD from the VirusScan. The only thing about that I hate is the accursed McAfee security center with all of its self promotion, etc. I had thougt about Sunbelt firewall, but I understand it has a vulnerability right now, unless it has been patched already. I know that McAfee and Zone Alarm free do about equally bad in the leak tests. Comodo does better, but like I said before, I don’t want to install something that I may not be able to uninstall normally. I don’t know if they have resolved problems with the uninstaller. Well, I’m in the thick of things with Webroot right now and have downloaded some testing program from them to run on my PC. I guess I had better finish doing that before attempting any other significant changes. UNfortunately, this may go on for a few days. If I didn’t have a subscription for Spysweeper that lasts until December, 2007, I wouldn’t even care. I do want to protect my investment, however. Ewido is good through next year also, so regardless, I will be protected.
Good luck with the spysweeper debugging. The firewall leak test link is good comparative reading.