Hard to say. But i’d probably opt for PCTools because i have good experience with them. Donno why. Only thing that attracts me with CIS is Buffer Overflow protection and heuristics that are still in the works (CIMA based) and integrated BOClean. They say it’ll come around end of march. At that point i’d probably prefer CIS.
You can use SUPERantispyware, MBAM or Spyware Terminator to scan for spywares and trojans. If any infection is detected, better and safer is send the file to Quarantine than to simple delete them.
I haven’t used any other anti-virus software in the last year apart from Avast which means I can’t exactly take puck shots at the competition (given that I haven’t used the software). However I have used McAfee, AVG, Panda, RAV (I’m curious if any one else has used this), Kaspersky and Norton a few years back. All of them had good points but mostly bad (at least from my perspective at that time). Avast is the only one that suits me best right now and will continue to do so for a long time (hopefully).
But since we are talking about Firewalls as well, I wanted to get a second opinion. I installed Commodo FW (only the firewall) which to my surprise installed flawlessly. The issue I have with it is that I somehow felt less safe.
I am an average user who has taken apart old desktops and one laptop and who uses the computer on a daily basis. But I am somehow worried when a software asks me to validate connections or create rules. This Makes Commodo a bad choice since I am not certain what I am validating when I’m being asked by the FW to confirm a connection. At the same time being constantly interrupted by the firewall is annoying. So after less than half a day I uninstalled Commodo and went back to my old Vista Firewall. To make sure I didn’t miss anything I created a restore point prior to the installation, and after using the uninstall program provided by Commodo I did a system restore to that point in order to insure that the settings were as they were before installation.
Now to the actual question. Apart from offering outbound protection what else is there in Commodo FW that the Vista FW doesn’t have?
Did you install the HIPS (D+) along with the firewall. This is where the anti-leak protection is in case something wants to phone home or send something out without your permission. Avast! (and other proxy-type programs) facilitates this problem by putting ashmaisv.exe and ashwebsv.exe in place as the actual internet connections, so that proxy connections to these routines via localhost do not show up as outbound connections to the firewall. Other things like “check for update” often hijack your browser to make the connection and also don’t show up. Usually benign annoyance, but could also be malware. If malware should also be caught by Avast! Standard Shield when it tries to execute, but the benign stuff won’t be blocked. If you are using the Vista firewall, take a look at Sphinx as a firewall control program-seems to get good reviews, but haven’t used it myself. I used the Vista firewall with Avast! for quite a while when I first got Vista and had no problems.
Did you install the HIPS (D+) along with the firewall.
No idea what this is. I only installed the firewall with proactive protection (this being givn as the most secure setting possible)
I used the Vista firewall with Avast! for quite a while when I first got Vista and had no problems.
So you've switched. What firewall are you using and do you consider it is better than vista's integrated FW. (another issue with Commodo FW was that My PC was discoverable on the network. With The Windows FW this is not the case. I tried the stealth setting in Commodo but these did nothing that I could see?
If you got a bunch of alerts that said they were from D+ instead of the firewall, you can tell you installed the D+ HIPS. I used the Comodo CFP firewall/D+ for about a year, but finally gave up when they pretty much abandoned fixing and improving it to work on their AV Suite. Currently have Online Armor, which is has much better usability, plus some features that I find very useful as a mobile wifi user. Along with the outbound/antileak/HIPS protection. They are also much more responsive (like Avast!) to fixing your problems. I use logging, for example, to find problems, and having that controllable in the firewall is a big advantage. If you just want to run your firewall and Avast! and be reasonably well protected without a lot of interaction, the Vista firewall is a pretty good way to go. And the Vista firewall does have outbound protection, simplified if you want to play around with the Sphinx software to set it up.
Going back to your original question. Both of these are free for commercial use.
Is that the reason you’re considering them apart from other free-for-home-use products?
Hmh, I did not know that. As a matter of personal opinion, I find that this is odd (“free for commercial use”). generally if you have a small business that uses computers, then you are most likely going to require special support since you are dependent on keeping your computers up and running in order to make money. So what would be the point of this?
On that note, can someone explain why home users get to use Avast for free (apart from the slight differences offered by the pro version)?
Slightly OT, but try opening the file in notepad (rename the suffix to .txt if necessary) and check that there isn’t a blank line above the text. Remove the blank line (if present), say “yes” to save the changes, rename it again to .exe (or .bat, or.com…) and see what happens.
Interestingly, neither Avast nor MBAM detect it with the line space present, but A2 does.
There are specific rules for EICAR test file. You can read about those rules on EICAR download webpage.
avast! follows the rules to a letter, others do it their way by detecting EICAR variants and modifications that shouldn’t be even detected when following those rules.