Anti-Virus Adventures and Disasters

[Charles Kane]

Quick Report
Read some somewhat negative reports about Avast (my longstanding AV program). I'm not big on being convinced as to the value of ANY a/v but I thought I'd give some of the alternatives a try.

(You might want to know that I did my uninstall/install routines very carefully and by the book)

1. Tried Avira (free) - it gets very solid tech reviews which place it amongst the best.
Result - disaster. Completely unable to update virus definitions. According to their Forum (with staff in attendance) - either because they'd just pushed an update and their servers couldn't cope (!) or because there was some problem with Windows or some issue with my Host file (it wasn't). So which was it Avira? Their server I reckon (I did get one definition update at 12kb/sec). Nowhere near good enough. Their forum is full of these complaints.
Uninstall

2. Norton (Trial). Easily the best looking and nicest to use of the lot and despite the very bad history of Norton products this has supposedly overcome those issues (hog, footprint, slowness, removal etc). and it felt good. One problem: their Heuristic engine DOESN'T WORK in windows7. so I keep getting Widows incompatibility messages about Norton Drivers. Norton online fix is good but fails to recognize that its a Win7 incompatibilty problem. Maybe there's a win7 version but I couldn't find it.
Uninstall (the uninstall tool only partially does the job and has to be run twice! Still had to manually remove some stuff - can't teach an old dog new tricks)

3. Kaspersky. Nice. They've got a Win7 Beta version. It doesn't expire till late December! You can't actually find it on their site (without searching and finding a link in one of their News Releases). But I found it and gave it a go. It's Beta so what follows should be tempered by that fact.
Locked up the system during full scan. Slowed Utorrent badly - had to write rules - still no good. Crashed explorer.exe (during full scan), crashed firefox etc. Oh, sh*t. By now I've lost patience.
Uninstall

4. Install Avast
Sweet. Everything works. system is fast. No 3rd party firewall but Windows Defender is fine - Unobtrusive.
Maybe it won'ft find every Virus, or the complaint that there are too many false positives is true.
Guess what - I can live with that.
I just don't want to have to have an interface with security all the time (never did like the cops).

 

[The Cool Guy]

Well, I have up and running McAfee on this version of Win7, and it's running fast and great. I've not experienced any BSoD or any Lockups during full system scan, etc.

 

[Charles Kane]

When I get over AV overkill, I might give McAfee a try. They've fallen off the map a bit in the last few years. But I think they were/are an Australian company so I should try them.
Pretty ordinary results at AV-Comparatives.

 

[John Henry]

Having avira and always got the update automaticly without any problems

 

[The Sly Assassin]

Agreed, i'm on Avira, and always gets updates, and Ive never had a problem with it at all.

 

[PotatoMan83]

Been using Avast Home Edition since the beginning of Win 7 beta, and never once had a problem with it, other than Action Center saying it is turned off when it is not. Does its job, finds everything, even when traveling on IE. I give it tops in the rating category.

 

[Mercurial]

Use Eset Nod32 AV or Smart Security ( I prefer AV+windows firewall). it feels like it was built for windows 7 O.O.

 

[imprtkid04]

I see a couple of you use avast, have you had a warning come up saying your trial version is about to run out in ___ amount of days? I was under the impression it was like AVG and it just had a free version.

 

[Charles Kane]

I see a couple of you use avast, have you had a warning come up saying your trial version is about to run out in ___ amount of days? I was under the impression it was like AVG and it just had a free version.

Avast IS free. You should however register. Registration - I think lasts 12 months, then you renew the registration.