Are there no good AVs out there anymore?

[John Connor]

Never had any issues with Bitdefender free.

 

[ithehappy]

Guys not creating a new topic for this, but what's the best lightweight AV/IS out there, which will suit and not slow down my crappy Samsung NP355E5X Notebook? For past five years I have been using NIS for desktop, but I am not sure if it will suit this slow hardware.
Thanks.

 

[AraB.]

Guys, which antivirus do you recommend me for Windows 7?

Price isn't a concern...

And which do you prefer, Bitdefender Total Security or Eset NOD32?

Thanks,
Ara

 

[AraB.]

BTW I just found that Bitdefender's BlackFriday Offer (70% off it's antivirus) is still on and you guys can benefit by visiting http://www.bitdefender.com/media/html/blackfriday2013/?pid=SEM_NA_BlackFridayHeist and buying directly from there! And 82% off Bitdefender Total Security Affiliate links are not allowed. Next time's a ban. --AnandTech Moderator mechBgon

Enjoy!
Ara

 

[John Connor]

Guys not creating a new topic for this, but what's the best lightweight AV/IS out there, which will suit and not slow down my crappy Samsung NP355E5X Notebook? For past five years I have been using NIS for desktop, but I am not sure if it will suit this slow hardware.
Thanks.

Try Panda Cloud.

 

[nemesismk2]

I think Kaspersky Internet Security 2014 is a great AV because they have said they will support Windows XP even in 2016.

 

[makegood]

I think there are still many good antivirus, but there are also lots of people who get infected with malware with those good antivirus on, so how to say?

 

[Morbus]

I think there are still many good antivirus, but there are also lots of people who get infected with malware with those good antivirus on, so how to say?

Check the benchmarks and chose, knowing there's no substitute for mindful usage, but also that a mindful usage alone won't save you.

 

[lowrider69]

I recently dumped Avast free after 9 years because I couldn't stand the new UI in version 9. I have no idea what they were thinking when they redesigned it. I initially switched to Kaspersky and it ran great for about 4 weeks and then it decided to not want to load properly. The tray icon would stay grey, but it would say it was enabled. I went through the whole nine yards trying to find any conflicting programs, uninstalling, reinstalling, etc...I gave up and got my money back. I went with Bitdefender Total Security 2014, 2 years for $19.99 from Newegg..so far so good. I disabled auto-scan and the Wallet feature.

 

[Morbus]

Today avast started detecting a virus on my explorer.exe. Win64ropper-Gen

False positive.

Of course with no explorer I have basically no OS. I know how to use the task manager and found what it was, but avast isn't looking so great now...

My computer is squeaky clean though, and I don't feel that avast is leaving doors open, but a false positive on explorer.exe? I don't think that's very nice...

 

[lowrider69]

About a month before I dumped Avast it detected it's own virus definition update as a virus. I shit you not. I'm going back to around November 2013 when I recall this happening. I went to their forums and people were bitching about it. I already hated the new UI and then that happened I decided I wanted a change and I waited about a month and dumped it. I remember years ago it picked up false positives with multiple Windows files and many people wound up destroying their Windows installations because they let Avast delete the files. Again, I checked the forums and people were bitching all over the place about how they messed their OS up. I knew better and I didn't delete anything. Every AV has issues with false positives but I just needed to jump ship. I always liked Kaspersky and Bitdefender anyway because I have had experience with both.

 

[pw257008]

seriously, Webroot is really good.

 

[G73S]

seriously, Webroot is really good.

indeed, lightest AV I've ever used and they have superior customer service.

 

[smakme7757]

I had Bitdefender Antivirus (Latest version) on my media center, licensed from a sale a while back. I kept getting bombarded with "Log into your Bitdefender account". It drove me nuts.

Anyhow my brother gave me one of his licenses for AVG Internet Security and it's a hell of a lot less intrusive. I've never been a fan of AVG, but the latest version seems pretty good. No intrusive advertisements at least.

 

[lxskllr]

I had Bitdefender Antivirus (Latest version) on my media center, licensed from a sale a while back. I kept getting bombarded with "Log into your Bitdefender account". It drove me nuts.

Anyhow my brother gave me one of his licenses for AVG Internet Security and it's a hell of a lot less intrusive. I've never been a fan of AVG, but the latest version seems pretty good. No intrusive advertisements at least.

The version on the office computer has some annoyances, especially if you have web scanning on. Using Windows lately has made a nice refresher on why I like Debian so much. I keep the work machine pretty locked down, and I'm thinking about uninstalling AVG. Maybe just using ClamWin to scan the occasional file if the need arises.

 

[smakme7757]

The version on the office computer has some annoyances, especially if you have web scanning on. Using Windows lately has made a nice refresher on why I like Debian so much. I keep the work machine pretty locked down, and I'm thinking about uninstalling AVG. Maybe just using ClamWin to scan the occasional file if the need arises.

I haven't had any problems with web-scanning, the only actual problem has been the AVG Outlook addon which stopped us receiving emails - Have a family email account on the TV . I just uninstalled that and all has been well.

I always run as a standard user on all my windows machines, even our media center is running as a standard user - According to this whitepaper by Avecto will mitigate around 92% of all known attacks that have been patched by windows update.

I actually ran without any form of AV for quite a few years, i had Sophos on my laptop, but nothing on my other machines. Last week i got a virus that kept playing music in the background which forced me to rethink my gripes against AV software.

So I'm contemplating getting a 2 years sub to AVG for our three Windows PCs here at home.

 

[lxskllr]

Last week i got a virus that kept playing music in the background which forced me to rethink my gripes against AV software.

Any idea how you got it? My biggest concern is other people have access to my work machine(WinXP). I can police myself, but can't police others when I'm not there. There's some peculiarities with our setup that makes upgrading machines difficult. As I get time, I want to test out some ideas on a free machine, but before that, I have a data recovery job to tackle :^/

 

[smakme7757]

Any idea how you got it? My biggest concern is other people have access to my work machine(WinXP). I can police myself, but can't police others when I'm not there. There's some peculiarities with our setup that makes upgrading machines difficult. As I get time, I want to test out some ideas on a free machine, but before that, I have a data recovery job to tackle :^/

Not really much you can do about other people, but running as a standard user would greatly decrease attack surface on the machine. It wouls also limit what other people could do on that machine as well.

In my case it was a machine that was only used by me. I don't use cracked or hacked software. I don't pirate or download movies and I'm careful on the web.

The day I got that virus I changed my account to an admin account and installed Java for some maintenance work on my network with some software that needed Java. Coincidence? Who knows.

My guess it an infected advertisement.

 

[lowrider69]

In regards to Bitdefender, I haven't had any popups asking me to log into anything.

 

[John Connor]

That's odd because when I had Bitdefender free I had to log in.

 

[Virgorising]

Guys not creating a new topic for this, but what's the best lightweight AV/IS out there, which will suit and not slow down my crappy Samsung NP355E5X Notebook? For past five years I have been using NIS for desktop, but I am not sure if it will suit this slow hardware.
Thanks.

I have run NIS for a long time; I luv it; recent builds are the opposite of resource hogs. Anyhow who says otherwise has not run Norton since waaaaaaaay back.

What are the specs of what you call yr "crappy Samsung" lappy? Even if it's dual core, core duo....with not impressive RAM, I doubt NIS will make a dent.

 

[G73S]

I have run NIS for a long time; I luv it; recent builds are the opposite of resource hogs. Anyhow who says otherwise has not run Norton since waaaaaaaay back.

What are the specs of what you call yr "crappy Samsung" lappy? Even if it's dual core, core duo....with not impressive RAM, I doubt NIS will make a dent.

I have a NAV license which I've stopped using due to a bug not resolved since more than 4 months now. While it's only a cosmetic bug, I'm a perfectionist and cannot deal with lazy programmers that can't fix such a simple issue.

http://community.norton.com/t5/Nort...ns-in-system-tray/td-p/1046489/highlight/true

I agree though, NAV/NIS are amongst the lightest security products right now as opposed to their past reputation of being resource heavy. NAV is actually much much lighter than NOD32. Proof? Copy a large 4 GB file from an HDD to another HDD and mark the speed with both and you'll see the huge difference.

Still sticking to my favorite though, lightest AV on earth, very secure, is only 700 KB in size, and auto updates silently (the program auto updates) the definitions are in the cloud so they don't need to be updated which explains its lightness / effectiveness

What Happens if Webroot "Misses" a Virus?

 

[ithehappy]

I have run NIS for a long time; I luv it; recent builds are the opposite of resource hogs. Anyhow who says otherwise has not run Norton since waaaaaaaay back.

What are the specs of what you call yr "crappy Samsung" lappy? Even if it's dual core, core duo....with not impressive RAM, I doubt NIS will make a dent.

I have sold that bloody laptop, and got a Lenovo B490, i3 2.4 GHz (3rd gen), 2 GB RAM and blah blah, I guess NIS won't cause any problem now right?
Or should I try Webroot?

 

[Virgorising]

I have a NAV license which I've stopped using due to a bug not resolved since more than 4 months now. While it's only a cosmetic bug, I'm a perfectionist and cannot deal with lazy programmers that can't fix such a simple issue. http://community.norton.com/t5/Norto...highlight/true

I had that happen twice! And I run the suite, not the AV. I rebooted. But, after the second time that was it. And, u bet, it was really annoying!

 

[Virgorising]

I have a NAV license which I've stopped using due to a bug not resolved since more than 4 months now. While it's only a cosmetic bug, I'm a perfectionist and cannot deal with lazy programmers that can't fix such a simple issue.

http://community.norton.com/t5/Nort...ns-in-system-tray/td-p/1046489/highlight/true

I agree though, NAV/NIS are amongst the lightest security products right now as opposed to their past reputation of being resource heavy. NAV is actually much much lighter than NOD32. Proof? Copy a large 4 GB file from an HDD to another HDD and mark the speed with both and you'll see the huge difference.

Still sticking to my favorite though, lightest AV on earth, very secure, is only 700 KB in size, and auto updates silently (the program auto updates) the definitions are in the cloud so they don't need to be updated which explains its lightness / effectiveness

What Happens if Webroot "Misses" a Virus?

I have sold that bloody laptop, and got a Lenovo B490, i3 2.4 GHz (3rd gen), 2 GB RAM and blah blah, I guess NIS won't cause any problem now right?
Or should I try Webroot?

Not one problem, the Lenovo will not break a sweat. Tho, given the chip in question, bet U could upgrade yr RAM some if the board permits. Can't imagine it would not permit.

I ran (run) an earlier build of NIS on my now backup desktop with the Presler chip, P D, 3.40, 3 GBs of DDR2 (running W7 but 32 bit in that machine) and Norton was light as a feather even in that system.

Never tried Webroot; again, I luv what I run, unless that changes, I am sticking with NIS; I never have to do anything, it updates, it scans while the system is idle......it's one app, once configured, I never have to even think about.

All I do every few days is empty the history log via the advanced button.