Beauregard said:
Or keep them both, and run the 'other one' as an on-demand scanner and a
backup. &deity; knows you surely need backups...
I don't recall that you can configure MSE to not operate as an on-access
(realtime) scanner, so the combo would be to install Avira, disable its
on-access scanner, and then install MSE. Personally I stay away from
Avira because it has known problems with S.M.A.R.T. in not understanding
the difference between polling a device to get its type and accessing
its media to actually use the device. A defect that showed up 3-4 years
ago has reared up again in a recent build which can cause some users to
notice Avira continually re-accessing their floppy or USB-attached
drives once per minute but only after a program that uses SMART happens
to poll the devices (like when you load a CD burning program that
queries all the devices to determine their type). They didn't fix the
problem before, it somewhat went away without any direct fix from them,
and came back (because they didn't fix it the first time).
I also tend to stay away from "loud" adware. Avast is adware but it is
mild in that you only see their ad when you load their GUI and only in
the summary panel. With Avira, you have to contrive a means to disable
their avnotify.exe adware program that loads on every update (like
renaming the file, creating a 0-byte version of it, or using SRPs to
prevent it from loading) along with altering the Run key in the registry
to eliminate the adware banner. Both Avast and Avira are adware but
Avira is just too much in your face and requires workarounds (which may
eventually be overcome by Avira). The AntiVirus product (yeah, not a
discerning name) got acquired by Avira who then made it blatant adware.
Also, most folks asking about anti-virus products are typically asking
about the free version. The webguard and other features are missing in
the freeware version of Avira (yet it is the full payware version that
gets tested in comparison reviews) but which are present in the freeware
version of Avast. To compare apples with apples, you would have to
compare the freeware version of both or the payware version of both.
Whether freeware or payware, Avast has more to offer. While the payware
version of Avira has the features of the freeware version of Avast, the
payware version of Avast exceeds the payware version of Avira in
providing, for example, a [auto]sandboxing function to further isolate
an unknown process due to so many users logging on under an admin-level
account. Avast has its SafeZone which, as best as I can tell (since I
only use the free version that doesn't have this), is similar to the
safe banking feature of Online Armor (a firewall + HIPS product). Avast
includes a boot-time scan (in free and paid versions) which will run
while the OS and malware are quiescent to provide a more austere and
clean environment under which to detect the pests. No boot-time scan
with Avira (unless, I suppose, you create a bootable CD with Avira on
it, but you don't need a boot CD to do a boot-time scan with Avast). I
you compare freeware for each, Avast provides more features and covers
more infection vectors. If you compare payware for each, Avast still
has more features. Avira wins by a percentage point or two in a static
on-demand scan for malware coverage but that's only a portion of the
story regarding the detection and prevention of malware on your host.
By the way, while Avast's Behavior Guard was passive in the past to
accrue statistics in modifying its operation, it became active in
5.1.189 build and now has some configurable options. Besides watching
for malware, it looks for the behavior of malware as typical of many
HIPS products.
Avira does beat Avast regarding disinfection (the ability to heal a file
to remove the malware) but MSE is better than Avira. Whether that has
value to you depends on whether you even want to try modifying modified
files in hoping to return them to a prior good state.
Since Avast is better than Avira, I would suggest using Avast (and
without using either Avira or MSE as backup scanners but then I don't
think you can make MSE a passive and manually initiated scanner). If
you want overlapping products then Avira (passive) and MSE (active)
would be one setup but then you're using MSE as the active scanner
although Avira has a better detection rate. If I'm wrong about MSE in
that you can configure it as the passive (on-demand) scanner then Avira
(active) and MSE (passive) would work. Yet I'd use Avast alone instead
of having to spend effort getting Avira and MSE to work together.
Remember that despite making an AV product passive does not eliminate
its system hooks and whether AV products will cooperate with each other
when chained in the system API depends is variable. I've found 1 active
and 1, or more, passive AV products can still interfere with each other
and usually I have to resort to something like Resplendence's Hook
Analyser (don't think its available anymore) to show me which programs
are trying to hook into the same system calls. So just making all but
one AV product as active and all others passive still can run into
troubles. Being passive (i.e., you execute them) doesn't eliminate how
far they dug into the OS to combat with other products that do the same.
)