I have rejoined the Avast users after quite a long absence (I have just purchased a three-year licence for Avast Professional). I had been using other AV products, but decided to ditch them for a variety of reasons, such as:-
Kaspersky – the latest version gave me several false positives and they seem to have removed (or at least hidden) some of the options in the new version, such as being able to be prompted when a suspect file is found. The previous version caused my PC to freeze at random intervals.
Spyware Doctor with AV and Webroot Spysweeper with AV – both of these slowed down certain programs on my PC to a crawl (especially IncrediMail).
Bit Defender – Completely wrecked my PC setup (fortunately, I had a recent disk image made by Acronis True Image, so I was able to restore my PC back to a recent configuration).
Avast seems to be working fine (apart from an initial false positive, which has now been rectified by the developers), so I am completely satisfied. Best of all, there is this very active and knowledgeable support forum to consult with others users if and when problems do occur.
Yes- welcome back
“What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Man” the Shadow Knows…
In this case what Evil lurks in your registry
did you run the Kaspersky removal tool?
do the others mentioned have removal tools in addition to add-remove programs?
and
did your machine come with an AV or Suite pre-installed?
I didn’t run any Kaspersky removal tool, just the add/remove function in Control Panel. I did suppliment that with Spyware Doctor/Webroot Spysweeper by using Total Uninstall Pro v4 to remove any leftover elements.
No, my PC did not come with any antivirus pre-installed (at my request - I didn’t want to have to remove such junk as Norton products). By the way, Acronis True Image has a very useful feature called “Try and Decide”. You can put your PC into virtual mode to try a new unknown program; then if you don’t like it, simply reboot your PC and there’s no trace of it at all.
But does it work if the installation requires a boot? I mean, after installing and booting, is “Try and Decide” still working or you’ll lost the installation?
I think that in those cases, the installation is lost. However, the other program I mentioned (Total Uninstall 4) does provide the option to continue monitoring an installation after a reboot, so it does offer a significant amount of additional protection if the Acronis product cannot be used. Also, I have used TU4 to remove unmonitored programs where the uninstallation using the programs’ own installer has failed.
