What's the Best Anti-virus?

[A Guy]

Even Avast (most AV developers) suggest using their own removal tools to uninstall when there are big issues. I think the idea is to not compound a problem by leaving remnants behind. A Guy

 

[Night Hawk]

I wouldn't recommend using any 3rd party removers either on any av software when generally you can find the "something __ui.exe" uninstall executable in the main program folder. For VIPRE that would be the sbaui.exe since GFI bought out Sunbelt a good number of years back and why you see the "SB" not GFI or VIPRE in use.

Even after the removal you still find a folder or two left on the drive that often contains the help file and is put there as a record of installation and removal of which version. Besides simply looking for the uninstall file the support information at the manufacturer's site is generally the best set of instrictions to go by.

It comes as no surprise that once you removed Avast the system booted up faster. I ran into that somewhat back when running AVG until getting into VIPRE where I could make some interesting comparisons having given Avast a look. I don't find any hardly any drag on startup time with or without VIPRE installed when going to put on a newer version.

But I also suspect there is always some likely not so noticeable with each program since most have some type of boot scan at work going over the start up items as part of the system protection and more so if a firewall is present. Some programs simply act like bloatwares on the other hand.

 

[A Guy]

Not 3rd party uninstallers, the program developers OWN removal tools. Most of them have them, and recommend them. They created them for a reason. A Guy

 

[lehnerus2000]

It comes as no surprise that once you removed Avast the system booted up faster. I ran into that somewhat back when running AVG until getting into VIPRE where I could make some interesting comparisons having given Avast a look. I don't find any hardly any drag on startup time with or without VIPRE installed when going to put on a newer version.

But I also suspect there is always some likely not so noticeable with each program since most have some type of boot scan at work going over the start up items as part of the system protection and more so if a firewall is present. Some programs simply act like bloatwares on the other hand.

It makes sense that an AV program should start running ASAP (especially before the network connects).

I found it interesting, as my PC used to boot up in 30s-40s (at the start of this year).
For the past 4 or 5 months it has been taking 50s-60s to boot up.

The boot up difference without the AV was 20s.
The AV couldn't have been taking that long at the start of the year, or my OS would have been booting in 10s-20s.

I assume that all of the security updates I've installed this year are responsible for the increase in boot time.

 

[Night Hawk]

Each av program when set for automatic updates or to automatically check for them will tend to load the built in updater while Windows is loading programs at start up. You can expect any Windows install to start slowing down gradually anyways as MS updates continue to come along with new start up items from program you add on later as well.

And A Guy has a good point there too about the better software companies providing a special removal tool for their products. That is common practice with most companies. If for some reason a program ends in a software conflict of some type and has to be removed the uninstaller may not be able to accomplish the task where a special tool is then needed to complete the task. These insure all registy entries are removed even if a program folder is still found on the drive.

 

[A Guy]

List of AV removal tools

http://kb.eset.com/esetkb/index?page=content&id=SOLN146

A Guy

 

[Layback Bear]

From a simpleton; me.

Every system is one update away from problems. That is all it takes to change a system. How all these anti virus programs and Windows 7 updates manage to work together is a work of art. It takes so little to cause a problem.

Because a quality anti virus programs has to watch so many things it has fingers all over the system. Peaking, inspecting watch for hiding places the infection like to place themselves.

A long time ago when I was using different anti virus quite often I found that completely removing them was very difficult. Whether using the authors removal tool or something like Revo.
If I used regedit I would always find foot prints of the anti virus program I had removed.
I don't know if leaving them would of hurt anything because I always removed them.

The good news.
Because I do read a gazillion threads and post I'm thinking just using the anti virus removal tool will work just fine in most cases.
Sometimes digging a little deeper is needed but that is not the norm.

Along time ago I was always watching those sites comparing anti virus programs. They would show a bunch of charts and explain why now I need to replace this anti virus program with another anti virus program because it tested better. I was buying 3 to 4 different anti virus programs a year. I would have to start all over learning the new anti virus program and train my system.

Then I started thinking, scary isn't it.
Who is paying for these test of anti virus. Who is paying the testers.
Somebody is, they are not doing all this testing just to show the computing how much they love them.

My last store bought anti virus was Webroot with Spysweeper. Try to remove that puppy. It will take the joy out of 2 or 3 days removing all of it.

I said to myself, self why not try one of those free anti virus?
I installed MSE along with Malwarebytes and haven't looked back sense.

I would never say it's the best combination for everybody because everybody's needs are a little different. The combination meets and exceeds my needs.
Both work well with Windows 7 and both are light on my systems.
I personally don't want to have to constantly tinker with my protection programs. This combination has never caused me a BSOD.
Most of all I seldom get a infection. It's been so long I can't remember when it happened.

All those anti virus programs I tried a long time ago might be great today with all the updates and upgrades. I really don't know because I have had no reason to stop using what I have to test them.

This is a long story about my personal experiences with anti virus programs.

 

[Night Hawk]

Several of those I am already familiar with and seem to work well with the older programs. I definitely know the AVG remover well! F-Secure, Obit, G-Data, everybody knows Malwarebytes! McAFail? only if you are... uninformed enough to put that one on! While the last one is far more recent which would likely be the better one to have onhand since it covers some 40 programs.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

This might help in the future:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/343783-avast-uninstall-completely.html

Thanks for the link too I installed Avira free on the newlaptop and it drove me nuts every ten seconds popping up something had beenfound and thinking Avast would be ok – same thing – never had such naggyprograms on a machine before . So MSE is going on this morning.

 

[NoN]

That will be 204days by tomorrow I've been using the "BitDefender Antivirus Plus" (2014) with not a single BSOD and PC slowdown...I'm amaze of its integration and background silent work.

The only thing is that software at uninstall had to be made proper way with the tool Bitdefender provide on their support site, in case upgrading to next version.

 

[Night Hawk]

This might help in the future:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/343783-avast-uninstall-completely.html

Thanks for the link too I installed Avira free on the newlaptop and it drove me nuts every ten seconds popping up something had beenfound and thinking Avast would be ok – same thing – never had such naggyprograms on a machine before . So MSE is going on this morning.

If you are being annoyed by those programs even the freebies you might want to give VIPRE a good run! I plan to get the lifetime license upon renewal this upcoming Spring! VIPRE Internet Security 2015 free trial

You never know it's even running in the background until going to click on some download when it detects some IE toolbar option or some other item you have to uncheck when trying out a utility.

 

[groze]

Here is what I did. I download the avg free usb scan & the virus update info. Then I boot from the usb flash to scan my computer about once a month. I already have MSE installed myself. I also have grub installed, which actual helps prevent boot sector virus/rootkits. How, I think it is installed in a non-standard way. When I was using windows 10 preview, I could never upgrade to the next build. Once I disabled grub. It installed. Then I re-enabled grub.

Here are some of the tools that I use
Avg usb flash boot
MSE
Mini Partition Wizard
Mini Partition Wizard CD/DVD boot disk (Only use this if you are going to restore your system from backup)
Super Grub CD/DVD boot disk (boots to a Linux system where grub is disabled. Some tools on the cd don't work to well or won't load but will boot to your Linux system though)
Macrium

 

[zapp22]

re AVAST which in the past I reco'd and no longer do so....
Just worked again on a gorgeous hp dv7, i7 with dedicated radeon gpu... just a killer system.
this is the second time I've had this one in my shop in 2 months - the last time I completely clean installed win7 to get rid of malevolence. Came back, and was reinfected with 'my search' search.conduit and relateds, variant "n"... they keep morphing this one. lots of hangers-on...
Paid "pro" edition of AVAST had been up and running the whole time [the lady insists it does some good]. never caught any of it. I doubt seriously that any other "AV Suite" that eats your resources would have caught these either. I got paid, but it was a nuisance having to fool with it.

the lady had uninstalled [without asking me] WinPatrol - "because its interrupting me too much" !!
duhh...

so it goes in pc land

i reinstalled WinPatrol told her she's "on her own" again regards the faux "security" of AV suites, explained to her how to respond to WinPatrol's "interruptions" and, once again, a warning or three about toolbars, "shopping sites", and "registry fix"...etc du jour "click me to solve your problems" links, et al. I doubt.....

anyone that does what I do knows that there are literally countless good, potentially potent PC's out there all around us that are effectively out of commission due to the swarm of grayware, malware, adware, popup-a-million-ware, choked browsers, rredirects, etc, so people eventually just move on to iphones, ipads,'droids, etc and quit trying to do any useful work on PC's.

as an aside, AVAST on android is a total disaster. can literally destroy your handset by overheating unless caught early and vanquished. The 'droid community thankfully has figured out that just a little periodic maintenance with a couple of good tools is FAR better than loading ANYthing realtime in the background

imo M'soft has lost the small-device war, and is in grave danger of losing the "touch device" battle altogether, permanently becoming a niche player. 'tis a shame because there is a lot of good utility in a Win 10 PC - it can be the hub of everything if properly done

 

[lehnerus2000]

I haven't noticed any detection issues with Avast.

Every couple of week I run MalwareBytes and it has always agreed with Avast (i.e. I can't recall it ever finding something that Avast hasn't complained about).

The clean install fixed some issues I had with the latest version (after the in-place update).

I don't like how many services it wants to run though.
I disabled most of the tools during the install too.

 

[Sugarcake18]

I wouldn't say there is a best antivirus a lot of them have their perks all I know is that Norton is a computer resource hog and a joke. (in my opinion)

 

[Jesse Williams]

I had Avast installed, and I must say that Panda Free Antivirus picks up more than Avast. AVG picked up more than Avast as well. Panda detects tracking cookies and removed them. I've heard that Avast has caused a lot of issues for people as well.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

This might help in the future:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/343783-avast-uninstall-completely.html

Thanks for the link too I installed Avira free on the newlaptop and it drove me nuts every ten seconds popping up something had beenfound and thinking Avast would be ok – same thing – never had such naggyprograms on a machine before . So MSE is going on this morning.

If you are being annoyed by those programs even the freebies you might want to give VIPRE a good run! I plan to get the lifetime license upon renewal this upcoming Spring! VIPRE Internet Security 2015 free trial

You never know it's even running in the background until going to click on some download when it detects some IE toolbar option or some other item you have to uncheck when trying out a utility.

Well problem solved as I flipped in an EVO SSD and an OEM 7and Kaspersky back on board I used the freebies really as stop gap measure as Ionly had one KISS licence left.

So I went and bought a key car with a 3 PC 2 year licencefor Kaspersky for $89 so for the financially minded that equates to $0.04 perday per machine so freebies in my mindare just stop gap measures as Imentioned before.

 

[Night Hawk]

VIPRE surpasses the bunch of them including AVG which I ran with previously for a number of years. You can be right in the middle of some type of resource hungry app or gaming session when the schedule full system scan begins and won't even know VIPRE is even installed due to how quiet it runs unless flagging a new download when you open the folder you have it in before even having a chance to click on it!

Saw that lately with a free media player I had to locate which had the typical toolbar you don't want option plus the trial for McAF(fail)ee you have to uncheck all the time. But I still needed to get the freebie player on a laptop since WMP 10 wasn't able to display some video captures correctly. The vertical hold was not to be found making them look like rainbow strips across the screen during playback.

As far as Norton Symantec more recently had to do some serious redesign work to make that one a bit less resourceful as explained to me a while back by one of their senior security analysts. Their Norton Internet Security 2014 is one example of the changes that company had to make over the years of having the Bloatware tag. I ran Symantec System Works as well as tried out McAFail back in the late 90s with 9x(95, 98SE) and gave up until finding AVG on the old XP machines a decade or so in years past.

 

[lehnerus2000]

I had Avast installed, and I must say that Panda Free Antivirus picks up more than Avast. AVG picked up more than Avast as well. Panda detects tracking cookies and removed them. I've heard that Avast has caused a lot of issues for people as well.

I use other programs like CCleaner and Glary Utilities to deal with cookies (Flash or standard) and Temp folder junk.

MalwareBytes scored 100% in AV-TEST's comparison a few months ago.
http://www.av-test.org/en/news/news...epair-performance-test-after-malware-attacks/

 

[Jesse Williams]

I had Avast installed, and I must say that Panda Free Antivirus picks up more than Avast. AVG picked up more than Avast as well. Panda detects tracking cookies and removed them. I've heard that Avast has caused a lot of issues for people as well.

I use other programs like CCleaner and Glary Utilities to deal with cookies (Flash or standard) and Temp folder junk.

MalwareBytes scored 100% in AV-TEST's comparison a few months ago.
http://www.av-test.org/en/news/news...epair-performance-test-after-malware-attacks/

I use Panda Cloud Cleaner and Malwarebytes.