is AVG a good virus scanner for XP Home?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jeff W
  • Start date Start date
J

Jeff W

I have to discard my old Mcafee 5 - it doesn't work with XP. I tried
Mcafee 8 but it's TERRIBLE, most options from the old version are gone,
and scheduled scans run only one way - no options at all.

I've heard good things about AVG fro grisoft -and it's free. anyone
have good luck with it? anyone suggest anything else?
/j
 
I have to discard my old Mcafee 5 - it doesn't work with XP. I tried
Mcafee 8 but it's TERRIBLE, most options from the old version are gone,
and scheduled scans run only one way - no options at all.

I've heard good things about AVG fro grisoft -and it's free. anyone
have good luck with it? anyone suggest anything else?
/j
Click to expand...
I've been using it for about a year with VG results.
 
Jeff W said:
I have to discard my old Mcafee 5 - it doesn't work with XP. I tried
Mcafee 8 but it's TERRIBLE, most options from the old version are
gone, and scheduled scans run only one way - no options at all.

I've heard good things about AVG fro grisoft -and it's free. anyone
have good luck with it? anyone suggest anything else?
/j
Click to expand...

You could visit http://www.virusbulletin.com/vb100/archives/products.xml
to draw your own conclusions regarding the historical effectives of AVG
and other anti-virus products. To figure out the failure rate for each
product, use failed/(passed+failed). AVG got an 80% failure rate.
McAfee failed 52% of the tests. Norton failed 19% of the tests. And
Kaspersky failed. But you need to check how many of the failures are
old and how many are new (the older the failure the less it relates to
the current quality of the product), plus you might want to exclude
tests that failed on a platform other than yours. eTrust had 28%
failures; you can get a 1-year free copy at
http://www.my-etrust.com/microsoft/ (includes anti-virus and firewall; I
have no experience with eTrust products).
 
AVG is passable but not as great. I've recently serviced several machines
with infections that either AVG missed or identified but couldn't remove.
It hasn't stood up all that well in comparative testing. I second the other
mention re. ETrust. The free release is a great deal.
 
It's normally sold at $29.95. Microsoft and Computer Associates made some
kind of deal and a free version including 1 year subscription is available
at http://www.my-etrust.com/microsoft/ That will probably not be
available indefinitely.
The package is EZ Armor which includes a branded version of Zone Alarm.
When you run the actual install, you can optionally install both or just the
AV.
--
 
so will i have to start paying for updates?

might be good to try for a while though -t hanks!
/j
 
Jeff W said:
so will i have to start paying for updates?

might be good to try for a while though -t hanks!
/j
Click to expand...

As said, it is a 1-year free subscription. You get to use it for a
year. After that, you will have to *buy* another subscription. I
believe that the free offer will be discontinued around February 2005
(don't remember where I read that). The subscription will continue to
whenever it expires after a year of you installing it, but you won't be
able to download the no-cost copy of it after that.

Rather than use the branded version of ZoneAlarm included in EzArmor
(firewall + anti-virus), you can just install the anti-virus portion of
it. You can also download EzAntiVirus and EzFirewall to get just the
component you want. I would suggest just using their anti-virus product
(it used to be their InoculateIT anti-virus product). For the firewall,
just go to ZoneLabs to download the 5.1 version (which fixes problems
they had for version 5.0) since the branded version included in EzArmor
or EzFirewall might be an older version. Or go use Sygate's free
personal firewall (smb.sygate.com). While Sygate has some nice security
features more than ZoneAlarm, there are some behaviors of Sygate that I
don't like (I'm also "Vanguard" under the Sygate forums at
http://forums.sygate.com/vb/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=8) and might end
up going with ZoneAlarm.
 
Yes - I agree - I tried installing the suite and the Firewall
installation (which I don't want and couldn't disable) went nutso so I
Killed it and went back to their site and found a download of
EZAntiVirus alone, and the key they gave me worked.

However - I benchmarked it against Mcafee and Norton. I REALLY wanted
to like EZAV. The interface was VERY nice, and it ran REALLY FAST.
However, I was disappoint to find that both Mcafee and Norton found a
number of trojans that EZAV didn't catch. M & N also provided worm
protection which I couldn't test but I don't think EZAV covers. Mcafee
also found a recent trojan that Norton missed, BTW.

(Here's what I did - a full backup of my kids machine, protected only by
an old copy of mcafee and I just discovered he wasn't updating, had a
number of viruses, trojans, adware, etc in it - I ran all 3 scanners on
the ZIP file of the backup - Mcafee found the most, Norton almost as
good, but EZAV didn't find anything that wasn't strictly a virus).

Bummer - it's a great program to use
/j
 
Jeff W said:
Yes - I agree - I tried installing the suite and the Firewall
installation (which I don't want and couldn't disable) went nutso so I
Killed it and went back to their site and found a download of
EZAntiVirus alone, and the key they gave me worked.

However - I benchmarked it against Mcafee and Norton. I REALLY wanted
to like EZAV. The interface was VERY nice, and it ran REALLY FAST.
However, I was disappoint to find that both Mcafee and Norton found a
number of trojans that EZAV didn't catch. M & N also provided worm
protection which I couldn't test but I don't think EZAV covers.
Mcafee also found a recent trojan that Norton missed, BTW.

(Here's what I did - a full backup of my kids machine, protected only
by an old copy of mcafee and I just discovered he wasn't updating,
had a number of viruses, trojans, adware, etc in it - I ran all 3
scanners on the ZIP file of the backup - Mcafee found the most,
Norton almost as good, but EZAV didn't find anything that wasn't
strictly a virus).

Bummer - it's a great program to use
Click to expand...

That's why the products are called anti-VIRUS products. The inclusion
of malware and spyware - which are NOT viruses - is due to pressure on
the AV makers to cover more than just viruses. Some AV makers are
providing protection suites, some enhance their anti-virus products to
detect *some* non-virus threats, and some just focus on viruses.

The same misconception bleeds into the newsgroups. You have someone
complaining about the iSearch spyware toolbar in an anti-virus
newsgroup. That is spyware, NOT a virus. Kaspersky, McAfee, and Norton
all do equally well regarding Windows viruses (see
http://www.av-comparatives.org/) but Kasperksy does better than McAfee
at catching trojans which does better than Norton (yet I suspect TDS-3
beats them all in regards to detecting trojans). However, for "other OS
malware", McAfee does better than Kaspersky which does better than
Norton. So you'll need more than just an anti-virus product to detect
non-virus threats. Trojans and spyware are not viruses. Regardless of
which anti-virus software you use, you'll still need spyware and malware
scanners and probably trojan scanners, too. You could even go further
(with impact to system performance) by using PrevX, Abtrusion, or System
Safety Monitor to further lockdown the security of your system.
Firewalls and anti-virus products provide some decent periphery or
boundary protection but, as you've seen, they don't protect the system
against the user.
 
Fair enough on the spyware and malware (I use Adaware 6 and am thinking
of upgrading to their newer stuff, even though i have to get the pay
version to be able to schedule it automatically). But - shouldn't an
anti-virus find trojans? Don't they really fall in the "virus' category?

/j
 
Jeff said:
Fair enough on the spyware and malware (I use Adaware 6 and am
thinking of upgrading to their newer stuff, even though i have to get
the pay version to be able to schedule it automatically). But -
shouldn't an anti-virus find trojans? Don't they really fall in the
"virus' category?
Click to expand...

A scheduled task and some scripting would allow you to update the AdAware
definitions automatically.

Same with Spybot Search and Destroy.

SpywareBlaster - that's trickier.

IE-SpyAd, however, is also scriptable.

And AntiVirus Software is for Viruses, Trojans and Worms.
AntiSpyware applications are for Adware, Spyware and Malware.
The differences are slight - but existent. All of those things are
annoying, Viruses, Trojans and Worms are usually more destructive - while
Spyware sends information about the user/computer/habits to some place,
Adware annoys you with popups - but they usually are not destructive, just
poorly implemented and end up interfering with other software.
 
The NEW Ad Aware Personal Edition cannot be set up to start a scan
automatically when called from the command line (as it is from the
scheduler). It does not accept the command line option that Adaware6
does to start a scan automatically when started.

check it out

Also - you say "And AntiVirus Software is for Viruses, Trojans and
Worms. AntiSpyware applications are for Adware, Spyware and Malware" and
I agree, but according to Etrust support, a Trojan or a Word is like
Spyware and they don't cover it. Pity they have that attitude, the
tool is very slick.

I'm going to give AVG a try when Version 7 is released at end of november
/j
 
Jeff said:
The NEW Ad Aware Personal Edition cannot be set up to start a scan
automatically when called from the command line (as it is from the
scheduler). It does not accept the command line option that Adaware6
does to start a scan automatically when started.

check it out

Also - you say "And AntiVirus Software is for Viruses, Trojans and
Worms. AntiSpyware applications are for Adware, Spyware and Malware"
and I agree, but according to Etrust support, a Trojan or a Word is
like Spyware and they don't cover it. Pity they have that attitude,
the tool is very slick.

I'm going to give AVG a try when Version 7 is released at end of
november /j
Click to expand...

Never said you could scan with Lavasoft automatically - only update the
definitions. heh
 
well, you CAN with Adaware6 - and I do so every night.
you need the Plus version to do it with their new stuff.

in my universe, if I can't automate it, what use is it? 8-}
 
Jeff W said:
The NEW Ad Aware Personal Edition cannot be set up to start a scan
automatically when called from the command line (as it is from the
scheduler). It does not accept the command line option that Adaware6
does to start a scan automatically when started.
Click to expand...

The new AdAware SE is vastly superior to AdAware 6 and users should
upgrade whenever possible.

I did a controlled test recently, using a badly infested system that
came into my shop for cleaning.

It already had AdAware6.181 installed so I updated that and did a
complete scan. It found several hundred items, which I removed.
AdAware indicated there were a couple of items that it could not get
rid of and so it would run again on the next reboot to finish the job.

Before rebooting I installed, updated, and ran Spybot S&D 1.3 which
found and removed a number of additional items. I also updated the
AVG antivirus on the machine and ran a complete scan with that. No
viruses were found.

I then shut down and rebooted the computer. AdAware launched early in
the startup process and did the complete scan, finding one item that
still needed to be removed.

When the computer had finished booting up I immediately downloaded and
installed AdAware SE, updated it and ran the full scan.

It found an additional 168 items to be removed, including 1 running
process and 1 loaded process module.

'nuff said.


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."
 
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