Run only ONE anti virus program!

system · 2008-01-30T18:35:54.000Z

Symantec, McAfee, AVG have all told their subscribers: " Only run one instance of an anti-virus program on a computer". Meaning if you have McAfee or Norton Anti-virus, you will save yourself and a lot of posts to the forums if you FIRST uninstall your OLD anti-virus program BEFORE installing Avast! (either Home/Pro). Really, they don’t like to play together. I had AVG Anti-Malware edition and completely uninstalled it to put on the Avast! Home, and later upgraded to Pro.

So, please, have only one. Now if you have spyware, malware, and rootkit checking programs they will generally get along well with other anti-virus software.

Perhaps a sticky?

DavidR · 2008-01-30T19:56:32.000Z

Virtually all AVs recommend only having one resident anti-virus installed.

We preach that and there are still no end of people who have more than one resident AV installed and they get that because they a) don’t know any different, b) don’t check first, so a sticky is hardly likely to reduce this a or b statistic.

avast does I believe check for other AVs during installation but, there are many different AVs which may not be detected until they clash.

So any warning should really be on the download locations to uninstall any resident AV and reboot before installing avast! (but not before you download avast).

system · 2008-01-30T21:40:57.000Z

Good advice David. It would be nice if the download sites all had bold warnings to download, THEN uninstall any resident AV program before installing the Avast! either Home or Pro. True, the sticky won’t prevent a.) or b.) … but it might give those that did install Avast alongside another Anti Virus program, and come looking in here for help, a quick idea on how to rectify their issues. ;D

system · 2008-01-30T22:47:14.000Z

Very good stuff here guys. But I think we will always have people that believe that installing two antivirus programs will somehow make them more secure. What doesn’t help matters is that a few people somehow (I am unsure how) can run two AV programs together without noticeable conflicts. These people though few in number often tell others it is okay to install two AV programs. The irony in this is that the people receiving this poor advice are the ones with the problems (even running the same two programs). For example, I have seen on several blogs where individuals claim to be able to run AVG and Avast! together. Short of all vendors having a pre-check installation for other antivirus programs, this will continue to plague many users.

polonus · 2008-01-30T23:33:07.000Z

Hi R. Richards,

In fact it is true that two resident scanners will conflict. It is like two dogs guarding a house start to fight each other and let the intruder pass. The same could be in combination with a non-resident scanner if the signatures will cause a second resident scanner to react, so do not combine avast with non-resident panda for instance. Resident and non-residents like online scanners or downloaded scanners like DrWebCureIt or tools with the latest signature-scans like Stinger.exe can be used next to each other.
I myself combine non-resident avast with ClamWinFree Antivirus and DrWebCureIt (keep these updated constantly), I also use COMODO BOClean 4.25 & Trend Micro RUBotted. In-browser scanning is done with DrWeb’s hyperlink av-scanner plug-in for Firefox and IE7. Crap is cleansed with ClearPrivateData in my portable browser, together with ATFCleaner and ClearProg before closing a computer session.
I minimize the risks of infection further not using full admin rights on the account I surf with and using SafeXP. Occasionally I run HijackThis to clean out the occasional non-necessaries.

polonus

DavidR · 2008-01-31T13:48:00.000Z

polonus post:5:

In fact it is true that two resident scanners will conflict. It is like two dogs guarding a house start to fight each other and let the intruder pass. The same could be in combination with a non-resident scanner if the signatures will cause a second resident scanner to react, so do not combine avast with non-resident panda for instance.

This is one reason why I pause the standard shield whilst running another security scan (on-demand or otherwise) to avoid any conflict with either unencrypted signatures or files extracted from archives to be scanned by the other scanner.

system · 2008-01-31T15:37:10.000Z

What about listing the different links to where you can download specific un-installers to COMPLETELY remove an instance of the AV software, Symantec, AVG, etc?

system · 2008-02-02T04:35:25.000Z

Link to remove Norton (different versions): Symantec Removal

Hers is another: KIS6 Removal - KIS6 Removal File for Removal of Kapersky

Here is one link: Trojan Simulator to test your AV against a ‘simulated’ Trojan
The page on their site for a Download-able simulated Trojan they state:
When the Trojan Simulator server is installed, it will exist as an active process in memory. It will also have an autostart entry in the system registry. Most virus scanners are not that good at dealing with Trojans, so it’s likely that your virus scanner, if it detects the Trojan Simulator server, will neither be able to remove the process from memory nor be able to remove the registry entry. Any decent Trojan scanner should take care of this if the server is detected."

Note that they say that “most virus scanners are not that good at dealing with trojans…” Well when I tried to download the test file Avast! popped up immediately and forbade me to download it, with sirens, and identification as Trojan. So I’d say Avast! did PRETTY DARN GOOD.

Now for credit, this Trojan Hunter program you can find at this link seems to be a pretty top notch program at checking a computer. I tried it on my wife’s computer and it found 3 Trojans. She is still running AVG software : at the moment.

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