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geekhack Community => Other Geeky Stuff => Topic started by: Rajagra on Sun, 23 May 2010, 03:58:25

Title: Antivirus programs
Post by: Rajagra on Sun, 23 May 2010, 03:58:25: Why are they so often great when you first install them, then slow your machine down over time? I used AVG for a while, then that slowed my machine down noticably. Exactly a year ago I removed it and put Kapersky on (free licence via my bank.) It was great, everything ran smoothly again. Over the last few months that PC has been running slower and slower. In particular, Youtube videos were stalling for a second or two at a time. At first I suspected something hogging the CPU, but recently it has been so bad I thought there was an imminent hardware failure.

Anyway. Just removed Kapersky and everything is flying again. Youtube 1080p videos expanded to full screen are perfect again.

Time to install MS security essentials I guess. So far that hasn't reduced my other machine to a semi-unusable piece of junk. Still in the honeymoon period I think. Let's see how they mess it up in the next year.
Title: Antivirus programs
Post by: EverythingIBM on Sun, 23 May 2010, 04:03:05: I actually don't even install antivirus anymore because of that (And I don't go on anything that would give me viruses).

Maybe it's from all of the constant UPDATES UPDATES UPDATES.

AVG as years passed, became more bloaty. If you can believe it, I had AVG running on my 300PL. It would NEVER be able to now with their current release.
Title: Antivirus programs
Post by: Brian8bit on Sun, 23 May 2010, 05:42:47: Microsoft Security Essentials is great. Been using it for ages now and it's light as a feather. Also, it was the only AV not vulnerable to a recent kernel hook attack that left every other commercial and freely available AV exploitable.

Common Sense 2011 edition is also really good.
Title: Antivirus programs
Post by: ch_123 on Sun, 23 May 2010, 06:46:17: +1 for MSE
Title: Antivirus programs
Post by: In Stereo! on Sun, 23 May 2010, 07:21:26: Used Kaspersky for a year and never did notice any slowdowns.
Title: Antivirus programs
Post by: kishy on Sun, 23 May 2010, 14:55:02: Quote from: ch_123;185979
+1 for MSE

Make that +20 or so among people I know and myself.

It's the closest thing to flawless that any AV has been, AFAIK. Only drawback is 40MB updates...
Title: Antivirus programs
Post by: Rajagra on Sun, 23 May 2010, 18:05:57: Well MSE is installed on that PC now, and it hasn't slowed down that I can tell.

My only criticism is MSE destructively deleted a few attachments from an ancient email archive without permission (on another PC). I'm 99.9% certain they were false positives because A) the files were much older than the viruses that MSE claimed they contained, and B) they were in an obscure place that no sensible virus would have dreamed to look and C) I use an old copy of Eudora as my email client.

I could have reconfigured MSE to not do that automatically, so I suppose it's only a small criticism. I have backups if I ever need those files.
Title: Antivirus programs
Post by: kishy on Sun, 23 May 2010, 21:42:53: One thing I like about MSE is that the function to ignore a particular detected file actually works. So often with x antivirus you'll find you've told it to ignore the file but access is still blocked...
Title: Antivirus programs
Post by: Rajagra on Sun, 23 May 2010, 21:57:48: Norton Internet Security was the worst for me in that respect. It would ask me *exactly* the same question over and over, even when I told it to "allow always". It just kept asking. Drove me insane. It basically forced me to block certain apps even if I wanted them to run. Now I'm sure there was a technical reason why it thought there were different instances of the same file or something like that. But when you've answered *exactly* the same question in *exactly* the same way for the twentieth time it gets old real fast.
Title: Antivirus programs
Post by: audioave10 on Sun, 23 May 2010, 23:50:40: I use Ccleaner and Malwarebytes and NO antivirus programs have been installed on my 2 PC's for well over a year. Freebee AV's aren't really very good once you get something serious. They may tell you what it is, but they probably can't remove it. They want you to buy their "professional" version. Windows 7 is very good about updates. My old XP SP3 has been at it for a long time too with no problems. Maybe I'm a little lucky, but I keep my speeds up. I don't use IM's which make a difference. I stay away from Facebook-type sites also.
Title: Antivirus programs
Post by: kishy on Mon, 24 May 2010, 00:39:38: MSE is the strongest exception I can think of to the typical "freebee AV programs suck" argument.
Title: Antivirus programs
Post by: didjamatic on Mon, 24 May 2010, 01:10:12: Sophos is the best I've used but it's only for businesses and isn't cheap. MSE is the best home user option IMO.

Eibm, we all go to sites that can infect you. CNN was a recent one that got a lot of people. The site can be trusted and then someone gets an ad published that calls an iframe to launch undesirable content from anywhere. I'd get some kind of av on your system if I were you. You're probably already infected. Run a malwarebytes scan to find out.
Title: Antivirus programs
Post by: hyperlinked on Mon, 24 May 2010, 02:23:19: Quote from: Rajagra;186221
Norton Internet Security was the worst for me in that respect.
Norton Internet Security also crashes Macs and it did so for several YEARS without getting fixed properly. It might still be causing kernel panics for all I know. I've dumped it.
Title: Antivirus programs
Post by: Blackbird++ on Mon, 24 May 2010, 04:18:11: MSE is certainly one of the best free antivirus solutions.
Other candidates are IMO 'Avast! Free' and 'Avira Antivir'.
I use Avast, somehow I like it the most of them.
Title: Antivirus programs
Post by: gcogger on Mon, 24 May 2010, 06:48:38: Quote from: Rajagra;186221
Norton Internet Security was the worst for me in that respect. It would ask me *exactly* the same question over and over, even when I told it to "allow always". It just kept asking. Drove me insane. It basically forced me to block certain apps even if I wanted them to run.

Norton Internet Security is a virus, and not an easy one to eradicate...
Title: Antivirus programs
Post by: itlnstln on Mon, 24 May 2010, 07:11:31: I put in my vote for MSE. I love it.

You know iMav is going to ban us all for this.
Title: Antivirus programs
Post by: hyperlinked on Mon, 24 May 2010, 07:47:40: He's going to give Wakarawa your home IP address to play with.
Title: Antivirus programs
Post by: ch_123 on Mon, 24 May 2010, 09:35:08: Eset is very good, but you have to pay for it... and I don't download nearly enough porn to justify paying for anti virus =P
Title: Antivirus programs
Post by: didjamatic on Mon, 24 May 2010, 09:50:57: I think Kaspersky labs creates many of the viruses and as a result is very fast at detecting them and offering cleanup.
Title: Antivirus programs
Post by: audioave10 on Mon, 24 May 2010, 10:23:05: Way back in about 2003, Norton was accused of doing just that. Here is some more stories about Norton...

http://justanothercoverup.com/?p=608
Title: Antivirus programs
Post by: washuai on Mon, 24 May 2010, 15:00:31: My helpdesk department thinks malwarebytes is a virus or malware. They also think fancy screensavers are resource suckers, because everyone knows that screensavers run while you are using your computer . .

We have Norton Antivirus on our workstations and it totally is an annoying resource hog.
I have free McAfee with comcast at home and while there's stuff it does right, I'm currently ticked with it. I got an av.exe virus and it didn't remove it and the computer didn't make it through shutdown properly during manual removal and now my computer isn't booting. I'll be reformatting that partition, reinstalling WinHoes (not a typo) etc. I'll have to give MSE a try. Especially, since Norton is now the free AV from comcast.

OT: Speaking of installation I miss the old stick in a floppy to just reformat the OS partition, because I don't enjoy unhooking things in the tower, because of stupid ACPI & BAD_POOL_HEADER crap. I didn't have that problem during the original installation.