Anti Virus

Den · Mar 19, 2008, 19:33:22

no I'm the Fiveman Rik

Rik · Mar 19, 2008, 19:36:04

Dave Clark? Can I have your autograph please??

Den · Mar 19, 2008, 20:07:30

Wrong one, I'm one of the famous five.

Simon · Mar 19, 2008, 21:40:28

I think you'll find you can set Kaspersky to only check new and changed files in future scans, Den, so the next one should be quicker.

Gary · Mar 19, 2008, 23:08:36

Quote from: Den on Mar 19, 2008, 19:29:50
Kaspersky up and running on my desktop, at first shocked how long it took to check everything.

Started to have problems almost straight away, Outlook 2007 running very slow and crashing. I was at the point of uninstalling it then I thought, wait it might not be the anti virus, it might be the spam checker. Turned that off and went back to letting Outlook look after itself and all seems to be well. The antivirus runs in the back ground and updates it self at least every couple of hours. So at the moment the jury is out, will report back.

First scan takes longer, it takes less time with each further scan, and you can set it to update every 30 mins, to make sure you are always completely up to date

old Bill · Mar 21, 2008, 18:33:40

Found this which makes Kaspersky even better value. This is the Internet security package. Anti virus,Firewall ect.
http://www.kaspersky.com/kaspersky_internet_security
Compare this to ESET
https://secure.eset.co.uk/order/category.asp?intCategoryId=7

old Bill · Mar 23, 2008, 14:19:40

Have just brought this.
http://www.kaspersky.com/kaspersky_internet_security
Was going to go for Nod 32 but the deal on this was just to great and it seems to have good write ups.

If you are looking at buying Kaspersky it half price till the end of March and if you enter WHSMITH in the coupon box it comes down even further. Just paid £16.00 for the Internet security pack and a 2 year licence.

LesD · Mar 23, 2008, 15:55:11

PREVX 2 on my main machine. Circa 14 quid a year - does what is says on the can.

What I like about it is that you wouldn't know it was there unlike the one mentioned in disgust at the top of this thread!
I quote "

"

PREVX 2 Research on the second machine. Free for me for the time being. Despite being a platform for trialling Beta versions I have never had any serious issues with it.

Den · Mar 23, 2008, 17:02:48

Quote from: old Bill on Mar 21, 2008, 18:33:40
Found this which makes Kaspersky even better value. This is the Internet security package. Anti virus,Firewall ect.

Just be carefull with the spam checker, the antivirus seems to be OK but I disabled the spam checker as it was clashing with Outlook 2007 and causing it to crash. No problems since

old Bill · Mar 24, 2008, 15:05:04

just been reading this review. Not sure I agree with the winer.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2231575,00.asp

Sebby · Mar 24, 2008, 15:22:43

For all we know, Norton 2008 could be significantly better than previous versions; after all, it has apparently been re-written and now uses 83% less resources. But, I still can't help but think it's probably not all that great, and the author of that article doesn't know an awful lot about this topic.

Rik · Mar 24, 2008, 15:38:43

You're right, Sebby, but who do we get to test Norton so we can find out - it's certainly not going near one of my machines.

Sebby · Mar 24, 2008, 15:46:53

Or mine.

Dangerjunkie · Mar 24, 2008, 17:04:44

Hi,

Symantec is an obvious no-no. One of my customers just offed it for being useless after the 3rd virus outbreak in a month, the last of which was detected when someone took a USB flash drive from one of the work machines and put it in their own laptop with AVG (which went off like a fire alarm.) One of my other customers still uses it but we affectionately call it DCS (Doesn't Catch S***)

I've used McAfee corporate but don't like it as it has a habit of calling home very regularly to get it's updates which costs a bomb if you're on 3G roaming or on satellite. AVG seems pretty good, particularly for a freebie but the free version is not licensed for commercial use if you work from home.

To kill 99% of all known germs (spware and adware) on my customers' machines I use a three-pronged approach for most scanning. I use Spybot Search & Destroy, Adaware 2007 and (as much as I hate to recommend a MS product as their approach to security is what led to this mess in the first place) Windows Defender (which is surprisingly good.) None of these products is perfect but they tend to miss different things so scanning with all 3 usually finds and kills whatever is there.

If you're happy delving into the internals of Windows I recommend visiting http://www.sysinternals.com and downloading Autoruns, Process Explorer and Rootkit Revealer. Autoruns is an absolute gem it shows every program that starts by any of the Windows autostart mechanisms (the one thing common to all malware is that it WILL try to autostart.) Set Autoruns to hide MS entries and then have a good look at what's left. I've found anything that tries to start in more than one place in the registry is almost invariably bad. Process Explorer is similar to the process manager but nothing can hide from it, it shows the program hierarchy, what started what and what instances of things like svchost are actually running. It also lets you suspend malware tasks rather than ending them which generally helps if you get a 2 part piece of scumware where each part respawns the other if it gets killed and lets you kill a whole process tree if needed. Rootkit Revealer searches for hidden files and registry keys common in more sophisticated malware.

If I have a file I absolutely cannot delete because it is kept open, even in safe mode. I boot using an Ubuntu or Knoppix Linux CD then I can kill such files because they aren't open as Windows isn't running.

I chose a different approach to keeping my business free of malware and my customers' data safe. I have installed Linux on all my machines now. I keep windows on them too and can switch when I boot in case I need to run a customer app where there is no Linux equivalent and the Windows version won't run under the Windows compatibility layer in Linux. There are literally thousands of Linux applications now, most of which can be downloaded for free and only cost money if you want commercial support for them. I'm very happy with my choice and haven't had a malware outbreak in 5 years. Linux is nowhere near as difficult as it used to be. I'd recommend anyone that wants to give it a go try Ubuntu as a starting point. If I didn't want to run Linux I would have changed to Mac.

Good luck,
Paul.

edit: fixed typo, improved description of Process Explorer and added Mac as a choice.

madasahatter · Mar 24, 2008, 17:09:23

Bookmarked that link for later - thanks Paul

Rik · Mar 24, 2008, 17:09:54

Good post, Paul.

Steve · Mar 25, 2008, 15:43:20

Now changed to Avast Home from free AVG,although never knowingly had a virus problem with AVG.Anybody aware whether this product is inferior to the Avast professional product. My understanding is that they are similar with the free Home version being restricted to non commercial use.Obviously I don't like paying for software if there is no need.Thanks

Rik · Mar 25, 2008, 15:45:15

No experience of it, Steve, sorry.

Simon · Mar 25, 2008, 16:46:05

Me neither.

old Bill · Mar 26, 2008, 22:34:38

Help. As you will have seen from my other post Kaspersky is having some very strange affects on my browser and my computer is taking a while longer to load. I uninstalled it and loaded a trial version of Zone Alarm and all was well. Can any one give me any tips for the basic set up (a idiots guide

) as the performance is set to low and it does not change whatever I do.
I am running Vista Ultimate.

Simon · Mar 26, 2008, 22:44:43

I have no experience of the current version of Zone Alarm either, sorry Bill.

Did you have a word on the Kaspersky forums about the problems? They are usually very helpful.

http://forum.kaspersky.com/

Sebby · Mar 26, 2008, 22:46:04

Quote from: old Bill on Mar 26, 2008, 22:34:38
Help. As you will have seen from my other post Kaspersky is having some very strange affects on my browser and my computer is taking a while longer to load. I uninstalled it and loaded a trial version of Zone Alarm and all was well. Can any one give me any tips for the basic set up (a idiots guide ) as the performance is set to low and it does not change whatever I do.
I am running Vista Ultimate.

Which version of Kaspersky is this, Bill? Hover over the icon in the taskbar if you're not sure.

old Bill · Mar 27, 2008, 09:20:51

Quote from: Sebby on Mar 26, 2008, 22:46:04
Which version of Kaspersky is this, Bill? Hover over the icon in the taskbar if you're not sure.

I am using Internet security 7 version 7.0.1.325. Just not sure how to set it up properly.

Sebby · Mar 27, 2008, 13:39:59

Quote from: old Bill on Mar 27, 2008, 09:20:51
I am using Internet security 7 version 7.0.1.325. Just not sure how to set it up properly.

The reason I asked is because there were problems on earlier version of 7, but they were sorted in this version. Your best bet might be the Kaspersky forums. I've never posted there myself, but I've had a look and they seem to be a very helpful bunch.

old Bill · Mar 27, 2008, 23:57:55

Thanks for all the advice. As it turned out I still had part of a old security program installed which seemed to be causing some problems. I uninstalled it and ran a Reg cleaner and it seems fine now. The only other problem was some of the things I was looking for do not work on Vista

. Still as far as I can tell it all seems to be ok now so will just have to watch it for the next few days to make sure there are no more problems.