What's the Best Anti-virus?

[Night Hawk]

If you download a utility like the free Media Player that resembles what comes in 7 namely the WMP the av here will flag the installer before you even click on it! That's because the option for an unwanted IE toolbar needs to be unchecked during the install. The software also finds bugs hidden inside rar and zip files other programs miss completely until...

 

[LarryA]

You'd be surprised on how many third party security suites are more closely comparable to Viruses

Agree

Just found a web sight where you can up load files and do a virus scan. Works well for a single file. Also provides edit information on the file.

https://www.virustotal.com/

Right clicked the .bat file & selected edit. According to Virus Total it is a safe .bat file. Having it analyze by Symantech.


@echo off
echo Cleaning up LogMeIn Rescue Applet folder...
:RemoveFiles
rd /S/Q "C:\Users\My Name\AppData\Local\LogMeIn Rescue Applet\LMIR0001.tmp\" > NUL
:end
rd /Q "C:\Windows\system32\config\systemprofile\AppData\Local\LogMeIn Rescue Applet"
del "C:\Users\My name\AppData\Local\LMIR0001.tmp.bat"
del "C:\Users\My Name\AppData\Local\LMIR0001.tmp_r.bat"

 

[Night Hawk]

I think that will be useful to bookmark for on the spot instant checks! Here however if I download a new app and then go to the folder where it gets saved VIPRE will spring to life if any other type of installer like IE toolbar option is present and labels it adware.

Any questionable files are instantly tossed into the temp quaranteen folder until user retrieved. If your av lacks however this site should be considered as it instantly identifies any prevoiusly scanned files reported by a long list of av programs good or bad in the results.

 

[zapp22]

follow money

I did a fairly large cleanup on a MacBook pro a few days ago - a paid gig.
of course the user was shocked, though the damage to performance was pretty obvious.

so later I was reflecting on the great meaning of it all... The PC industry is rapidly shrinking and a lot of "periphery" development that was fun back in the heyday has been exterminated. others hang on hoping for a few pennies here and there. Real money however is being spent on browsers, and on hackery - and somehow the two have become, I think, allied if somewhat accidentally.
The "AV package" people are not investing in the products they peddle anymore - its like a big inside joke. They know it is fruitless, they know most users are ignorant, and so the game goes on. Their wares increasingly will be marketable to bidders wearing black, gray, or whitish hats.
Malware guys will target browsers and of course adware, spending their brightest/best efforts on handsets as do all the other players.

Browserware is getting really, really complicated - its like an operating system riding on top of an operating system, or a VM without the encumbrance of much hardware. [this approach of course has been Google's intent from the beginning of Chrome-things]. The three leaders have a bit of a tiger-by-the-tail - they can't NOT spend the effort to keep apace, but doing so has an escalating cost/investment curve and how do they get paid for their efforts?

Grayware/ad-hijack-ware/marketing-pushware/search&divert-ware - all of these could be classified as "non-malware" but from my vantagepoint of being the go-to guy when a customer's machine is serving someone other than the user, they're all the work of the devil. But the browser guys can't afford to see it that way, can they? especially not Mozilla - One wonders how long they can keep at it. Google and MS don't care whether the browser itself pays for itself - its a strategic product, not a profit-product.

I'm hopeful that as pc's are abandoned and the docked handset becomes the PC, some sophisticated "good guys" intent on protecting us from the inevitable will find a way to turn a profit on doing so.

 

[Night Hawk]

Well as far as the desktop pc there will always be some form of it since the business world depends on it! As for the average Jack or Jill home user Tablets substitute for laptops which have been made to sub for desktops with the ability to add on things like a large projection screen type tv or now even led tvs that can serve the dual purpose as the large screen monitor along with adding on usb peripherals like a separate keyboard and mouse. You increase storage as well as back things up with the external HDs.

That last part can be helpful for those on tight budgets for sure while not everyone is going to be jumping crazy for using a hand held device or small screen for desktop uses. This is one reason why All-In-One type desktops appeared as the solution for space saving as well as combining everything into one rather maintaining all of the proprietary separate elements as HP, Dell, and others did in years past where only their keyboards and other replacement parts would work.

They now simply place the tower inside the monitor since everyone wants their own keyboards and mice bought elsewhere. So the hardware side is covered with much lower production costs. The OS and software side on the other hand is an anyone's game there with MS reducing the number of user features while opening the doors for more 3rd party apps being put into the OS. W7 of course being the last version suited best for user customization as far as what still came included in Windows as well as not having 3rd party ware options built in as seen on the newer versions.

As for the endless war on malwares the more involved the browser environment becomes with tv as well as music videos and other media common place on the web the malwares have to become more sophisticated since people are accustomed to paying for more web based services now then ever before. Keeping in mind that the IPhonies and not so smart phones are opening new doorways for how these newer bugs can be spread. With the addition of social networking incorporated into the limited browsers seen with these devices ransom wares are not so rare as they once were but more frequent.

 

[groze]

I have an all-in-one myself. The reason I like it so much, the fan(s) are really quit unlike a desktop. It doesn't seem to get as dusty as tower desktops do on the inside. I also like the size of the monitor. Isn't an all-in-one desktop still considered a PC? The things I don't like about it, I think it is harder to get inside to add/remove hardware unlike a tower desktop.


Manufacture now have mini desktops as well, not just for apple any more. The prices on the pc Mini are somewhat reasonable but you would still have to buy a monitor.

Night Hawk is correct, I wouldn't like a small screen. That why I do very little texting on my cell phone and don't have a smart cell phone as well.

 

[Night Hawk]

I run a dual monitor setup here that simply wouldn't be possible on anything too comact where the resources wouldn't be adequate enough for things like gaming and multimedia. That plus having four internal drives two being dedicate storage/backup drives plus a second split up the middle for temp OS installs with a second partition for complete system images which is the one thing that hasn't even been mentioned for a good number of pages!

Whether you have a compact model like your's, a laptop, or tower case one of the best ways of protecting your files besides the manual backups I do as I go is to have a complete system image type backup where you can restore not only the main Windows install but all of the programs you are presently running in the event the drive should need a complete wipe!
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/663-backup-complete-computer-create-image-backup.html?filter

 

[groze]

Night Hawk, I use Macrium Reflect a lot. My system is imaged backed up to a USB hard drive. I have restored from it as well. I just wish I knew about it sooner. I got rid of the backup that came with the Toshiba usb drive. Reflect also restores Linux partition without any issues. This below is Mini-tool partition wizard, showing how my drive is partitioned.

 

[Night Hawk]

I use the full version of Acronis here since images are pretty well compressed down in size considering the ton of programs I run. I had consider Reflect some time back but saw a review pointing at Acronis T.I. at the time as the best of the list. Plus I caught a good sale on it back then!

Since any ssecondary OS installs on the second drive would be isolated anyways I never have any concern about what is there anyways since I can always start over from scratch either dumping another fresh temp install on or create a new system image which I will doing again here again once I finish up a project I haven't quite gotten to yet.

 

[LarryA]

Bring everyone up to. Appreciate everyones help. Opened Elevated command prompt Diskpart/List Disk/Select Disk #/Clean All. In the process of running clean all one of the hard drives stopped functioning.

Re installed the O.S. thru elevated command prompt F10 and ran clean all on the drive 0 (C: drive SSD). In the process of installing software & Tuning the system. again appreciate the help. Not getting notices my OS is not original.

Checking into and trying out different A.V. programs and Firewalls prior to making a final decision. Norton Security 2015, Bitdefender Internet Security, ESET Smart Security. Night Hawk you recommended one I will try it out as well. Thanks.

A number of you recommended and thank you.

Need to find a good Back Up for the system a few recommendations appreciated.

 

[DavidE]

Need to find a good Back Up for the system a few recommendations appreciated.

Macrium, Acronis, AOEMI, Win 7 built in Backup ...
Some of the recent posts have suggestions/favorites.

My personal choices are Macrium and Acronis.
You need to try them to see what works best for you, and you like best.

I have multi-boot PCs, and that is an important consideration for me.
Macrium and Acronis allow me to backup and restore any single partition.

 

[Night Hawk]

I've been running with Acronis True Image 2010 still not having gotten the latest version and that still compresses the full system image backups down in smaller size then seen with the Windows built in option. The images are kept on a separate drive.

 

[zapp22]

Repeating myself ad nauseum: there is no "AV" suite that will protect you, period.
infections these days are not "V" for starters - those monikers are retained because the bulk of the remaining market for such are technically illiterate and have been using "AV" forever because marketing agreements with vendors put that junk on everything that shipped [along with a lot of other junkware, grayware, spamware]

Backup is easy.
Restore is hard.
If all you're doing is "backing up" - copy/paste is quick.
For real restoration, the one I use exclusively is Paragon B&R [i.e. "2014"]. Not user friendly. Not "consumer" product IMHO, but it works like voodoo. RESTORES to the drive precisely as it was archived. boots right up.

 

[groze]

Repeating myself ad nauseum: there is no "AV" suite that will protect you, period.
infections these days are not "V" for starters - those monikers are retained because the bulk of the remaining market for such are technically illiterate and have been using "AV" forever because marketing agreements with vendors put that junk on everything that shipped [along with a lot of other junkware, grayware, spamware]

Backup is easy.
Restore is hard.
If all you're doing is "backing up" - copy/paste is quick.
For real restoration, the one I use exclusively is Paragon B&R [i.e. "2014"]. Not user friendly. Not "consumer" product IMHO, but it works like voodoo. RESTORES to the drive precisely as it was archived. boots right up.

Just my opinion, I find restore easy as well as back up. I use Macrium reflect image backup & restore though. I also use MSE (Microsoft Security essentials), and I use spybot S&D old version. To date, I haven't got a virus, spyware or malware.

 

[Night Hawk]

With Acronis T.I. you have two main options when going to create a full image backup. !) Quick and Easy to save on drive space 2) Sector by Sector which will include the boot sector as well as unused partition space to restore the drive the way it is not simply unpack everything simply wrapped up in an image file. That does take up some space however for a 528gb image from a 1tb OS drive! Other quick images were running at about 275gb or so being compressed much further.

With multiple storage drives and regular copy and paste manual backups I could simply nuke the host drive and toss on the clean install at any time. From there each program would also see a fresh install go on until getting things back to an approximate but never 100% exact match for the way things had been. Any fragmented files that could be defragged would then be free of fragmentation as well as running a much faster defrag to followup on the clean install of everything.

As far as prepackaged bugwares that is limited to OEM premade not custom builds. And therer are usually ways and means to see factory "Bloatwares" as the descriptions go gone forever! With a little effort even OEM built can still be free of all that crud!

 

[zapp22]

in my experience in the pc patch & related for couple of decades, the number of 'surprised' accounts who found out the hard way that their restore plan did not actually function far outnumber the successes. however, for the large portion who never had a reason to find out the "hard way", their commentary would be a lot like the religious belief in "AV" suites: "I've been running this 'backup' system for years and I've never had any trouble with it".
reminds me of motorcycle guys arguing about which motor oil to use: "my daddy ran penzzoil for a century and never had any really big issues, and I've used it for years and can't complain".

recently a very close friend who runs an IT shop had a total collapse of a key server/function - very important one. as is true of any bigger shop the primary was virtualized and well protected, the backup was complete, and somewhat firewalled - a whole backup server, dedicated to the task, hot-onlining at least in theory. both failed.
still digging through the debris trying to figure out why.
I admit that one case is more than a little bit unusual.

 

[Night Hawk]

One thing I looked at when first getting the present system together was backing up the backup drive with a second main storage drive to compliment the first. Initially system images both Acronis and The W7 backups went there as well as the second partition on the second OS drive since that could be used for testing the quality of the images made to insure the integrity.

Now add another external into the formula to store even a few more images into the mix. Since the external is switched off when not in use unlike the spare internals it never is exposed to any of the downloads. It also doesn't see the wear and tear either and less likely to go suddenly. That's not to say the drive couldn't simply belly up the next time I go to use it. But while it can back up a degree of what is on the internals the internals can back it up at the same time. The rest duplicated across the two internals serves to back each other up.

The key feature as far as the av is concerned is not the ability to locate and remove all bugs but the web filtering portion of the firewall the software offers to prevent things from getting on by being a little overprotective upon going to look at any new site.

 

[Robert11]

Best Software To Prevent CTB-Locker ?

Hello,

Will be getting a new PC, and am very worried about getting infected, again, with CTB-Locker.

Is there any general concensus as to what is the best avail. software to automatically prevent it from getting into the PC, in the first place ?

Spyhunter ?
MalwareBytes (the paid version) ?

Or,... ?

Thanks,
B.

 

[jonnyhillow]

No program i am aware of , it's all lies with the users common sense imo . Smart users rarely get infected with minimal security programs while the "not so bright" get infected regularly with the heaviest protected systems lol.

 

[jonnyhillow]

I am always blown away when i view whats on peoples computers when they ask for help with infections , the scan results they show are just mind boggling , just tons upon tons of crap on there lol..

I have virtually nothing on my computer , always been that way .