reassurance required from evangelist please.

Viruses and worms
1

i have been HAPPILY running the software combination listed for about 3 months and it has worked well detecting and securing 2 Trojan win32 to the chest for me to deal with later, but i have just read an article in a PC mag that had a review of about 8 anti-virus programs and i was concerned that Avast 4.7 free performed poorly saying that it was inadequate and failed to detect quite alot of test virus’s. where as Avg 7.5 free came pretty much top ahead of some payable AV’s . I don’t believe everything i read and you get what you pay for but this article has concerned me . I switched from Norton as it was too consuming to Avast after reading up on this forum and was impressed with the product and the way people help eachother. I am new to computers and don’t want to spend all of my time swapping from one AV to another.l
I know alot of people will have read this magazine and might just uninstall Avast and use another AV ,so any reassurance would be grateful, THANKS

Avast home 4.7 free
Avg anti-spyware
Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition
Spybot Search and Destroy
Spywareblaster
Cyberhawk
Comodo firewall

2

Use your own experience of using avast and not a single review unless you know exactly how the tests were carried out. I assume you are talking about Computer Shopper ?

If you check www.av-comparatives.com where you will see that tests are done over a long period of time and in those regular tests avast consistently gets rated better than AVG.

However in isolation no single product is going to stop everything and these reviews are looking at things in isolation, your multi application approach compliments avast and boosts avast’s specialist anti-virus detections.

I have almost three years experience of avast and no infections with a set-up similar to yours, I don’t use Spybot Search and Destroy or Cyberhawk. With your set-up I feel you have little to fear, especially if you ad a dash of common sense.

However, I do have another tool in my defences, Drive Image, this takes an exact image of my hard disk partitions, I run this every week and if the worst ever comes to the worst, I restore the last image I took. So I can be back to a clean working system in under 15 minutes.

3

:slight_smile: Hi Stava :

 I am concerned with the presence of Cyberhawk on your computer ; have seen "negative"
 comments about it on the bleepingcomputer Support Forums. It is a "type" of program called
"HIPS", and these types of programs MAY "conflict" with other security programs . The best
 forum I know about HIPS programs and Rootkit Detection programs is the "Other anti-malware"
 forums on Wilders Security at www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=35 . There is a
 Cyberhawk "thread" there that makes interesting reading. It seems some very knowledgeable
 people are providing "free testing" of the program and providing "feedback" of WHAT they
 have found and the Developers of Cyberhawk appear to be responding to WHAT has been
 found and are making "corrections" . However, perhaps there is another "HIPS" program that
 does NOT have all the "flaws" of Cyberhawk !? At this point in time, I would NOT put this
 type of program on my computer, since these are relatively "new" types of programs . Let those
 "Experts" be the guinea pigs .
4

Hi, sorry i’m a NEWBIE but i am very experianced with computers but i have only just joined the forum tonight. Has i was reading through your first message i noticed that you had a long list of security programs. I prefer to use Norton Free. Because it has all the security programs in one. Most people tend to think that Norton is slow but it offers great protection and i have never had problems with picking lots of things in the scans. Also if you have lots of security programs on your CPU it will be just has slow has Norton. I recomend Norton, anyway its your choice mate. GOOD LUCK 8)

5

I can’t understand why you would want to join a support forum for an anti-virus program that you don’t have, other than to promote a competitive product.

Personally I have an aversion to suites as I do believe in adage ‘Jack of all trades master of none.’ With individual complimenting programs, you get to choose the best or one that suits your needs not what comes bundled in a suite. But, each to their own.

6

I, too, prefer to choose individual complementing programs that, in my experience, slow my computer much less than Norton.

http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u319/tls_53/screenshots/nortonfree_cr.jpg

And the programs on my daughter’s computer are all really free.

7

Duplicate post.

8

Norton is free? I’m not so sure about that. Or does “Norton Free” mean we should remain free of Norton. ;D

The reason most people think Norton is slow is because it is slow (resource heavy is proably a better description).

@stava

Could you post a link to the review you read. I can’t seem to find it, but I do see that the individual product reviews give AVG 7.5 an Editor’s Rating of 2.5 with no user ratings (AVG Free scores better than the paid version). Avast! is given a 3.5 by the editors and a 5 by the users, so there are some inconsistencies over there.

http://www.pcmag.com/products/0,,qn=Antivirus+Software+Personal,00.asp

9

Good comment! ;D

10
Could you post a link to the review you read.

The review’s just gone online:

http://www.computershopper.co.uk/labs/230/anti-virus-software/products.html

11

hello, sorry for not replying as been laid up in hospital, back now and OK.

quote - However, I do have another tool in my defences, Drive Image, this takes an exact image of my hard disk partitions,

is this just like the standard system restore?

quote - I am concerned with the presence of Cyberhawk on your computer ; have seen “negative”
comments about it on the bleepingcomputer Support Forums. It is a “type” of program called
“HIPS”, and these types of programs MAY “conflict” with other security programs .

it was showing too many pop-ups,not using now, didn’t mean to include , sorry

quote - Hi, sorry i’m a NEWBIE but i am very experienced with computers but i have only just joined the forum tonight. Has i was reading through your first message i noticed that you had a long list of security programs. I prefer to use Norton Free. Because it has all the security programs in one. Most people tend to think that Norton is slow but it offers great protection and i have never had problems with picking lots of things in the scans. Also if you have lots of security programs on your CPU it will be just has slow has Norton. I recommend Norton, anyway its your choice mate. GOOD LUCK

bought it, tried it, didn’t like it, uninstalled it!!! but thanks for your input

quote - ‘Jack of all trades master of none.’ With individual complimenting programs, you get to choose the best or one that suits your needs not what comes bundled in a suite. But, each to their own.

i agree!!

quote - Could you post a link to the review you read. I can’t seem to find it,

sorry didn’t get back to you, thanks FreewheelinFrank

sorry if this is a bit long but got carried away, i usually find the answers in the forum so don’t need to ask.

             thanks to you all,   stava -  still an AVAST user! :D
12

Drive Image is nothing like System Restore, or should that be system restore is nothing like Drive Image. System Restore isn’t a patch on ‘any’ imaging software is it is for a totally different purpose, basically protecting files in system folders and registry settings, etc. it doesn’t protect data files, etc.

System Restore MVP site - http://bertk.mvps.org/
There are many, many reasons why a System Restore may fail. For example, see “Why are previous restore points not working?” in the “Troubleshooting” section of this official Microsoft page:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/plan/faqsrwxp.mspx