Avast! vs Antivir PE Classic

I have read different test and review. All the antivirus solution are very good, but some people has give more “points” to Antivir, because it detect more virus during the web navigation (i have tested personally and is true).
Now, I must decide if swap to Antivir or not. Is true that Antivir PE don’t detect packed virus? And Avast is more efficient against virus into zip files?
Other pro and anti Antivir segnalation?
Some people come from antivir to avast?
Bye.

Antivir and avast each have their pros and cons:

Antivir does detect more spyware/jokes/dialers than avast but also detects more false positives.

Antivir has HUGE updates. avast! has tiny updates.

Avast has email, P2P, Instant messaging, network and standard shields, antivir has a standard shield only.

But because if I go into some web site with Internet Explorer Antivir detect some files as viruse and Avast no?

Depends on avast! configuration…
Depends on what site you’re talking about…
Maybe you can send some links to virus (at) avast.com
But, anyway, please, don’t post like infected links here.

I have AntiVir (not resident) and avast!
AntiVir has too many false positives (specially macro viruses), slow and huge updates, few update servers, interface weak (in my opinion).
avast! is far much configurable, smart and fast updates, lots of servers for it, beautiful interfaces for all tastes 8)

Anti Vir I must say is a easy antivirus for all novice users. It does have only one shield which is the Active Guard. It does have heuristic to scan all files, avast! has heuristic for Emails and Outlook only. Anti Vir doesn’t have automatic updates but avast! does. Anti Vir does have a smooth scanning engine but the updates are too large and their servers are mostly clog up in the morning. I say Anti Vir is pretty good, I recommend that antivirus to those who are a bit of a novice user. :slight_smile:

:slight_smile: Perhaps another good & FREE program has the “good”
features of AntiVir, so could have Avast & the “other”
program and not have to choose between the 2 anti-virus
programs !? For a list of good & FREE programs, see :
http://members.accessbee.com/mitch/
NewbieOldieUpdated.html .

If avast! would have AntiVir heuristics,that would be another story (manly because avast! has a very good packers support).

Anti Vir was the first antivirus I’ve used. It never detected anything. I ran Yahoo AntiSpy & it found a trojan and promtly removed it.

I dumped Anti Vir for McAfee. McAfee found a worm & removed it. McAfee Virus Scan is a no extra cost benefit of my ISP, but rarely updated when I used Wi-Fi or another ISP (on my laptop) so I downloaded Avast! Home. Avast! finds more than McAfee did.

I did try AVG in between McAfee & Avast!, but it never found anything, didn’t update as often as Avast! or as easy to use as Avast!.

If you don’t feel “safe” with Avast!, use the free version of BitDefender along with Avast!. Bitdefender Free is scan only. Use Avast! for resident protection & BitDefender for scanning. Lots of Avast! users do this, including me. BitDefender did find a trojan Avast! missed on my computer. With the help of Freewheelinfrank on this forum I was able to remove it.

Based on this thread I downloaded Bitdefender free.

Unfortunately, a process, BDSS.exe, takes 16Meg even when the program is not running.

Is there a way to stop this?

Do I really need Bitdefender, is Avast sufficient?

Other than Bitdefender, any other programme recommended?

Thanks
Ian

Yes, ClamWin

mwav by eScan (Kaspersky engine & signatures) and CureIt! by drWEB.
Both can be easily updated and are not resident. Older version of mwav (4.4.7) can also clean, newer version scans only. You’ll find links at my website. For the older version of mwav search google or -even better- search at Wilders (www.wilderssecurity.com), there is a complete thread about that one.

Hi,
two questions :slight_smile:
does clamwin also occupy such a big amount of memory (the way the free version of bitdefender does) even though it has no real time scanner loaded?
also, if i want to run a web based scan for second opininon (eg panda activescan) do i need to disable avast (at least the standard shield) while running it? if not, will it interfere with the scan?
Thanks.

I don’t think BitDefender occupies that much memory. You can set the services to Manual and start then only when you want to download updates and scanning. As it is a backup (non-resident) scanner, you won’t use its scanning that much frequently I suppose. ClamWin takes less memory than BitDefender (that loads services).

You’ll find different suggestions. Mine is NEVER disable antivirus protection. You can have ‘double’ scanning, by the on-line and by avast! when the files are ‘touched’, but better safe than sorry. Specially because you’ll be on-line at that time.
Other possibility is setting the sensitivity to Normal (and not High). This will improve significantly your performance scanning on-line and won’t affect your protection that much.

You can have both AV’s installed on you computer but use just one of them for real-time protection.

You can configure avast screensaver so that it will just scan for files and ignore infected. AntiVir will still scan files that avast screensaver scans and it(Antivir) will remove them.

If you will dangerously infected so that you will not be able to start you primarly antivirus or find infected file, then you can use boot-time scanner that avast have that can try to find and remove infecte files.

Basically, i now believe that avast! is sufficient…i ran today both the McAfee and the Symantec online scanners and they didnt find absolutely anything.
I ve been using avast! home edition (using the normal sensitivity in all providers) in this laptop since July when i bought it and this was the first time i ever ran any other antivirus vendor scan…apparently avast! never missed anything :slight_smile: