MightyKitten said:
er.. yes and no: I cannot recommand this manner of virus protection. But
since I guess you are as stubborn as I am, I think I will do better
recommending a Freeware AV that does this tings:
You can also rip the registy entries from avg, rendering the onaccess
service useless, so you remain with an on access scanner (with some
antivirus applications you can change it in the options dialog)
MightyKitten
I use(d) avast!, AntiVir, AVG, BitDefender, Trend($), VirusScan($),
one that CA owns now, and others for on-demand scanning of downloads
and sometimes partitions without using their on-access/always on
feature. Most (all?) of these do require services (for Win2k), but
resource loads are small since they are just waiting to be invoked
from my context menu.
I particularly like BitDefender Free for this because signature
updates are very quick (even better than avast!), execution is quick
(second? to AVG), and BD is better than average at finding zipped
malware (especially important to me). I just hide the tray icon
because closing it stops two services: I haven't tried to analyze in
detail and remove it.
To use avast!, just disable (not delete) the startup registry entry
via direct surgery (why bother/risk?) or WinPatrol, WinSonar, Spybot,
StartRight, Codestuff's Starter, etc.). The avast! basic UI does not
provide for disabling on-access/always on scanning (nor later
enabling, so _disable_).
The AntiVir UI makes selective disabling easy, but I don't recommend
AntiVir for this role because the standard context menu install does
not handle multi-file selects, just individual files or directories.
I don't remember what I did to install/setup AVG, nor do I remember
sufficient details to evaluate Panda (free in US if you qualify) or a
couple of others. Antidote is a free on-demand scanner (KAV based?),
but it is only updated weekly, installs and uninstalls each time it is
run, and has some other quirk.
Note, more and more anti-viruses are picky about cohabitating. That's
partially why I haven't bothered with VirusScan, Panda, Freedom, or
(CA's 1 year free) recently even though I have (or had) legal copies.
You may have to disable scanning (recommended!), disable a registry
entry, shutdown service(s), or even remove registry entires to do the
initial install of another package. I've forgotten whether the other
applications conflicted. Some conflicts also may depend upon the
order various packages are installed, your OS, and the wind direction
and intensity when you were born -- or was that conceived.
You have lots of choices. There are few good reasons -- and even
fewer sufficient ones -- not to use both an always on scanner and one
or two other on-demand applications that complement each other plus
other security software as needed. (PestScan, PestPatrol scanner
online, is _very_ quick and catches almost everything Ad-aware and
Spybot have found when I periodically compare.).
BillR
