What's the Best Anti-virus?

Ohhhh I think you are onto something there! I can't say just where but especially at gaming sites if you click the wrong button you wouldn't get a Steam game mod for example but the trial version of something else. It's an old tactic to get people to buy something unwanted!

If you run a search on a particular Windows error you often run into some registry program that someone may even recommend from having bought the same but not the actual solution for the particular error you may be experiencing on your own system. At other times you may arrive at a site where you have to pay for a subscription to view the answer for a similar if not exact same question regarding some error being a form of sales gimic.

One thing I have been noticing lately is the need to click on the "allow cookies" button when arriving at some sites during a general web search and decline automatically and simply back away from the site in question. That prevents any spyware bugs or tracking cookies from being placed on the system.

One of the reasons I will continue to stay with the present form of internet security used here is the web filtering will often block new windows when arriving at a site and flagging external links from the site. The pages are blocked for security reasons when the program detects certain forms of embedded coding in them.

Most newer or newer versions of the best av programs will automatically prompt you about scanning flash drives and other external devices like cell phones and cameras upon the initial detection when first plugged in. I was pointed at VIPRE by someone in the industry as well as a mechanical engineer that had done work for MS when he offered an evaluaion on it.

A few years back I had to clean one scam ware off a laptop that had the gui of the Advanced System Care freebie app some were familiar with having the name of "Security Essentials" trying to mock the MS program by name. BUT! That was the one I was mentioning before that download four fake trojans with the prompt that you had to buy a program that didn't even exist!

While AVG started getting larger in size even for the free version they were about the first besides Crawler to introduce web filtering in the form of an IE toolbar addon. But! I never did care for IE addons excepr for the Bing toolbar option since that is MS!

The free 30 day trial version of VIPRE works under a temp as the full retail product unlike the free versions of many program giving that one an A Plus rating. But the real besides having the best rated programs is "Multiple Layering" of system security while most av programs won't allow for any second av type program.

Nothing is ever 100% against the ever growing number of malwares being cleverly developed to bypass all known programs. Bug writers always seem to manage to find loop holes regardless of what program(s) you have! Being selective as well as cautious with what goes on flash drives like other removable devices often with any additional SD or other memory cards is one advice to help avoid the spread of any bugs! Keeping off of the web and not using any seems to be one solution that prevails for total isolation. No fun there however!

I think the most likely reason for Norton getting the "bloated" rep is very the same as what Vista saw initially with people running systems with less then 2gb of memory compared to most now running 4gb or above! On those old pcs with only 256mb, 512mb, or a pair of 512s the Norton av or Symantec System Works were larger programs with the lesser amount of available ram.

Once you got into something with 2, 3, 4gb or more you hardly noticed it. The same would seem to apply to the predecessor to W7 as far as the minimum requirements not having been set high enough to match the OS there. W7 on the other hand just like the newer versions of these same softwares was reworked at the core levels in order to perform more efficiently.

Once I was able to get into a 64bit OS the ball had already changed a bit there with companies rethinking things as far as their av programs. Despite which program free or paid I've had on over the years I still seemed more or less bug free only getting an occasional pest. On the other hand I have to advise some people to run what I have on now since their kids manage to find all of the bugs I end up cleaning off!

Any Avast users experiencing weird issues with System Restore?
System Protection is turning itself on and settings are changing

Peter, it may be the Avast NG

Some information about new avast! NG component: our classic sandbox technology (used for DeepScreen, Sandbox and SafeZone components) restricts a sandboxed application to modify your system. As Windows OS is quite rich for various APIs and frameworks, we need to monitor more and more OS functions invoked from the unknown applications. This works perfect for Sandbox/SafeZone, but it's not enough for DeepScreen analysis. When a malware is analyzed in DeepScreen, we'd like to allow it to behave freely without any restrictions and monitor only its activities. Unfortunately, we might end up very soon if it tries e.g. to load a kernel-mode driver (you can't monitor kernel-mode, and if it gets there, it can control your entire OS, hide itself, connect to internet, ...), or use some undocumented system calls on 64-bit OSes (we use own hypervisor driver to fully protect 64-bit OSes, but this doesn't work on older PCs or with disabled VT-X/AMD-V feature in BIOS).

Avast! NG helps us to analyze malware real-time totally without any restrictions - it can load a kernel driver, it can delete any Windows files, format your volume, everything it wishes. The malware is executed on your OS using VirtualBox engine and the entire OS with malware is monitored. NG was heavily tested for a few months by our user base and we have fixed various HW/SW conflicts and tuned performance. After avast installation, it takes a couple of minutes to prepare NG (this is executed in the background with normal priority in this Beta, it'll be on idle priority in final release).

https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=154857.30

It creates a snapshot which could explain the space loss. I chose to disable Deepscreen as I have layered security, and I'd rather have the space. Have him use Space Sniffer, or Treesize free or similar, and see if he finds a large folder in the Avast directory. A Guy

Thanks for that info Bill. :)

I currently have DeepScreen enabled.
I reset System Restore earlier today and it is still holding its settings (even after a reboot).

Maybe scanning provokes the issue.
I have Quick Scan set for 6:00 AM everyday (except Sundays when I have a Full Scan scheduled).

I'll check the Avast folder next time I notice anything weird (and tomorrow when I get up).