Hello,
I am not a current user but I am considering switching to Avast free edition and have some questions. Please excuse me if terminology is incorrect.
1)I noticed somewhere(CNET I think)someones XP system had trouble recognizing Avast.
2)Can Avast scan browser links when I do a web search?(I mainly use Mozilla Firefox)
3)Can Avast scan emails?(I use Gmail & Incredimail)
4)Do these programs conflict with Avast;
Zone Alarm, Spybot S&D, Malewarebytes, SuperAntiSpyware
Hi bobginger and welcome. I am sure a moderator or Tech will respond to your questions as soon as they can…usually pretty quickly as long as its not 2am in the morning
I will say though that what works or does not work on one persons PC is totally different on the next PC. It will of course depend on your OS configuration, the software programs presently running on your system and any security programs installed no or uninstalled in the past as well as how they were uninstalled ie. via Add and Remove or Vender Uninstall option or Utility.
Thats all for me as I’m not sure which of the programs you mentioned play well or don’t play well with your present configuration(other programs running at the present)
Someone very knowledgable will certainly respond.
Well you are on the right track…I mean the Mods or whoever is responding to your questions will certainly ask you for that kind of info. For example read my signature at bottom of post. Most all the moderators and Tech people have similar.
Forgive if I’m speaking out of line. But Avast does check browser link and email as they have real time shields offering this protection(Web Shield and Mail Shield) Avast has a total of 7 Real time shields that will run when installed.
Also Avast is anti-spyware in itself as long as spybot is not running a real time shield i’m sure there would not be any conflicts.
I have a system runnin XP-SP3 and Avast with no problems. Try it I believe you won’t look back! I love how running this Anti Virus has given me back the speed of my computer as it doesn’t take all my memory to run it
The Avast Evangelists (forum helpers) are always here to assist you 24/7 with any issues or questions you may have and are quick to respond. Moderators rarely post on the forum but will read.
If you look at my Signature (down at the bottom of my post), I also have XP SP3 and run Avast Free with Firefox and use gmail with no issues. However gmail does use it’s own antivirus to scan since it is webmail, therefore it bypasses Avast (it can’t be scanned by 2 AV’s. Most webmail servers have their own internal AV and scan all mail, so you can verify this with your mail server.
If you uninstall AVG, make sure you use the AVG vendor’s uninstaller tool, then reboot. I’m not sure what version you have, but here is one list uninstaller: http://www.avg.com/us-en/download-tools.
If you uninstall Spybot SD w/Teatimer: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/howto/uninstall.html. In addition, you need to go into Advanced settings to disable the resident protection (2 areas to possibly disable – Teatimer and some IE blocking), then de-immunize if the immunity has been set. That takes a minute or more sometimes. The run the program’s own uninstaller, which should be in the Add/Remove Programs. Also see http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=65833.30 - See Post #31.
There have been multiple issues with ZA (on their side) causing conflicts. There are other FW’s to select from that do not conflict with Avast – Online Armor, Outpost, Comodo (without AV) to name a few.
Hi again,
I am using XP pro SP3, Pentium(R)D CPU 2.80 GHz, 960 MB of RAM
Mozilla/5.0 Firefox/3.6.12,AVG 2011,Zone Alarm(latest),Spybot S&D(latest). Tea Timer is already disabled, but the rest of Spybot would still conflict?
I am leaning towards changing to Avast but have not completely decided, it will be alot of uninstalling.
In the Avast free edition is the safe surf included? According to the product comparison it does not look like it.
I retrieve my emails from gmail with incredimail, so you are saying I don’t need to scan the emails.I don’t log into gmail or open emails there, they are opened in incredimail.
Thanks Bob
Sometimes. You would have to try it, but SafeSurf already gave a good uninstall-guide. Btw, Spybot is obsolete, if you run Free Mbam…! (Which is state of the art atm…)
Web-Shield and Network-Shield is included, don’t know what you mean with ‘safe surf’…?
The Mail-Shield scans mails received (POP3/IMAP) with a mail client.
asyn
Hi bobginger. Just curious about AVG AV…was there a problem with the program…or maybe a function not available thats available in Avast AV.
Also I did read somewhere that there is an AVG uninstll Utility Tool that is also recommended as an added step to Uninstalling the AVG software…For what its worth.
Hi Schmidthouse and others,
In AVG there is what is called “Link Scanner”, here is what it does. In the search bar of my browser I type lets say “audiogon”
(a audiophile website name), the browser lists possibles after each there will be either a green, yellow, or red symbol. Green safe, yellow questionable, red known bad. Is there a equivalent in Avast free?
Avg recently released AVG 2011(10)on 10/27/10 about, many people including myself upgraded from avg 9.5 to 10. In the past avg’s major updates ie 7.0 to 8.0 to 9.0, have gone fairly simple. I have had to completely uninstall/reinstall 2 times because of ‘general error’ about updates and the email scanner does not work.(look at the avg forum. lots of unhappy people) Their uninstall utility from the web page works well.
The other issue is Zone Alarm which works well now, is that to completely remove it you need to go into the safe mode and look for all these hidden files, multiple restarts, etc. One time with ZA they said to uninstall/reinstall, when I did the uninstall I lost internet access and to do a system restore.
In short I am checking out other options, for the most part AVG,ZA,& Spybot have worked ok. But with these ??? about avg I may switch.
I am not very comfortable digging deep into my system, I feel to completely uninstall ZA & AVG I would be on the computer for hours.
Sorry about the long reply,
Thanks Bob
In summary, I have not really had system problems or viruses,etc that I know of for years, mainly problems when avg or za has a major update.
Thanks Again
I was an AVG user myself. I had the full version of AVG Pro up till May of 2010. I experienced crashes constantly with Microsoft Outlook during my year using the product. This crashing was caused by the AVG Email Plugin. After two months of messing with this shield and sending AVG multiple files after files I grew tired of wasting my time. AVG offered to make it right by giving me another year of free Pro protection which was nice of them but I decided it just wasn't the way for me to go. My system was ok and it ran ok, fast but not fast enough. AVG did use quite a bit of resources.
I started researching many different AV companies and their AV products. I tried Comodo first but grew quickly tired of constantly dealing with the pop-ups I was having and the AV would freeze half way through a scan most of the time. It just wouldn’t work right on my system. I did however love lots of things about their product. I then looked at a couple others including Avira and Norton. After doing some more research I went with Avast Pro figuring I’d take the components of Comodo that i liked, the Firewall and the defense + part and use it alongside Avast Pro 5.
I have been using Avast Pro 5 for about 6 months now and I can honestly say I have not had one single MS Outlook crash with the Avast Mail Plugin, I have never had a scan freeze and my computer is much faster then it ever was using AVG. As a matter of fact, I have had NO problems with any of the features of Avast. I have now matched it with Online Armor as it was discussed in another forum and everybody had very good things to say about it. I deleted Comodo and installed Online Armor about a week ago. I have eliminated about 90% of the pop-ups now with OA. I also use Malwarebytes and SuperAntiSpyware occasionally for a backup scan just to see if anything ever gets through and since my install of Avast I have had nothing get onto my system.
I thought to myself, Does this program even work but then while browsing the web it saved my day from a bad site. I never have issues with this program like I did with AVG. I promise you Avast is a great AV product. Maybe not the best at any one thing but overall, does well at everything.
Yes I remember a few years back when I did use ZA and how difficult it was to get it gone from my System. Thankfully, with the help of a software developer friend of mine we finally did get it completely gone. Now days there is a ZA Uninstall/Cleanup Utility Tool available(Just Google that)for anyone wanting to make sure all reminents are removed.
I like Avast for a number or reasons especially the “Boot-Time Scan” option. Not only can you shedule a boot-time scan from the Scan options Avast will automatically(if your system is attacked/Viruses recognised)which happened to me once…ask if you wanted to shut down and perform Boot Time scan. If I remember correctly, Avast automaticlly shut down my PC and then rebooted into a scan and with every item detected gave me option on how I wanted to deal with each one…Very Cool.
I think others will mention that SB S&D is out of date and that Malwarebytes is definitely the specialized software program of choice for detecting and removing malware.
Good luck with whatever choice you make
PS…Yeh the support here in this forum is quite good!
avast 5.0 Free has fully configurable real time shields. I strongly recommend avast over AVG. avast has been proven to be better during independent blind tests. The real time shields is one thing that sold me. May I suggest downloading and trying avast 5.0 Free and see for yourself. Don’t forget to register during set-up…it’s simple and free. Another idea is if avast does not work it could be that you might have traces of a former anti-virus on your system which should be cleaned before installing avast. I would recommend WinUtilities Free.
