Antivirus for Win7

charliebruce said:

Me: none. I use a combination of common sense, windows' own security model, Chrome or firefox, limited user permissions, all users sitting behind a firewall, and a simple-to-reinstall system for all machines in my domain, should one be compromised. I might occasionally also sweep through the server looking for dodgy files, but I haven't seen any so far. As for keygens or similar with viruses, I avoid them wherever possible, but for the rest I'd upload them to an online scanner if I don't trust it. It keeps my machine running so much faster, compared to daily scans, and saves a subscription fee. The only real risk I really face here is my own stupidity (running something as an administrator when I shouldn't), or a major vulnerability in a browser causing it to run code.

Click to expand...

No offense intended....but if you actually used some common sense...you would use a anti-virus program. I don't care how good you think you are....Shoot, I used to think the same thing a long time ago, but I found out otherwise.

I would have to agree because it only takes one e mail and then your re formatting your system and that's if your backup copy doesn't have a virus in it and if it did then you don't have a recent back up...... all in all it's worth the minor loss in performance to go with Norton or avg or any of the top software even advast is better than nothing a little but still better than nothing ( sorry just had to get one last bash in their lol that thing ruined my finances because now I have a gf ) but all in all you need something.

I would have to agree because it only takes one e mail and then your re formatting your system and that's if your backup copy doesn't have a virus in it and if it did then you don't have a recent back up...... all in all it's worth the minor loss in performance to go with Norton or avg or any of the top software even advast is better than nothing a little but still better than nothing ( sorry just had to get one last bash in their lol that thing ruined my finances because now I have a gf ) but all in all you need something.

Click to expand...

Lmao avast has to be by far the worst Anit virus program I have ever heard off.... lol that's funny. My girl friend was running advast ( acutely how we meet) and was complain about how slow her laptop was going, somebody told her to install avg and she did found 5 different viruses, was still slow I got my hands on it installed malwarebytes got rid of 117 different cases of spyware and malware then placed Norton on it and got rid of 6 more Viruses and 3 Trojans,

I can understand why you say Norton is bad as pre 2009 stuff it was begin to lag allot of resources but with Norton 2009 dud this stuff fly's and my system is so much faster and safer

lol the attached picture is when i was ruining spy bot on here system and avast finely found 1 entry. But you know what in a way i want to thank Advast as if it wasn't for it i would have never meet my current girlfriend and also in a way i want to kill advast because if it wasn't for it i would have never meet my current girlfriend : )

Click to expand...

It's called Avast! :banghead:

All my emails are scanned automatically by Google and I *never* open executable attachments, ever. I also read them on an iPhone rather than PC most of the time. Of course, I will manually go through and clear out any possible sites for infections once in a while (rootkit revealer, procmon, etc), because to me, any hit in performance isn't worthwhile. The only reasonable way for a virus to get onto my machine would be if I browsed to a site with a compromised browser(read: IE8), had a forwarded port connecting to a vulnerable service on my machine or server (only one is Remote Admin, which I trust enough, and has further passwording after that), or if I ran a virus myself as Administrator (the only one that is likely, which is where I use online scanners). Plus, most viruses that would evade my detection (advanced rootkits, hiding themselves using custom drivers) are often not written with 64-bit windows in mind. These methods have only led to one virus in recent times, and for that reason I haven't touched IE since. I don't have any confidential information that puts me at financial risk, and even if a virus were to wipe my data, it's all safe and sound in off-site backup. Worst effect it could have is an afternoon spent reinstalling.

Care to explain what happened to you which changed your opinion on this? I'd be interested to hear...

I see this thread has already pretty much said everything I was going to, but yeah... The best free antivirus programs are AVG, Avast, and Avira.. The best paid antivirus is NOD32.. Norton is garbage, mcaffee is garbage, bitdefender is okay but horribly slow, Fprot/FSecure are quite good, though not free, trend micro is garbage. The corporate version of norton, Symantec Endpoint Protection is surprisingly very good, though the consumer version is terrible, takes over your whole system, doesn't detect viruses, it's actually much worse than a virus.

As for spyware, Spybot S&D is good, Malwarebytes is good, Superantispyware is good, ad-aware is lousy. If you're just trying to clean out a nasty infection smitfraudfix and combofix are great, so is rootkitrevealer, gmer, and hijackthis.

As for firewalls, unless you have no router, I highly recommend against any sort of software firewall, they do very little to protect you and they're very annoying, popping up all the time, conditioning you to always click yes to everything without reading it. If you must, I hear sunbelt is good, comdo is apparently okay, zonealarm is poor.

I work at a computer store and I run at least ten virus scans each day, so I have a pretty good idea what works and what doesn't... At least 50% of the virus-ridden computers that come in here are running a full paid version of norton, and when I uninstall it everything speeds up dramatically. I've never encountered a virus that slows your computer down as much as norton. I can't even begin to describe how much I despise that program. A friend of mine is the north american distributor of bitdefender, and he keeps telling me how great it is, that it updates its definitions hourly, yet in all honesty I've never seen any virus that's been first detected with bitdefender, it seems the f-secure labs in helsinki are usually the first to identify new threats.. Bitdefender's scanning engine is incredibly slow, scanning a fresh install of windows with some 50,000 files took over 3 hours, whereas nod32 did it in 30 minutes. Microsoft has a new antivirus program in beta testing right now, and apparently it's very good, though I haven't tried it yet.

What do I use for my own computer, you may ask? A handy little app called "Common Sense 2009", which involves not running executable files from untrustworthy sources. I've been running without any antivirus for over 8 years now, I run a scan maybe once a year, and I've never had any viruses. Last time I had a computer of mine infected was around 2000 or 2001 when the blaster and sasser worms were going around.. I did have an antivirus then and it didn't help me, back in those days you'd automatically become infected just by plugging into the internet for 5 mins.

First off.....There really is little to none performance loss with avira. The only time when it is noticable is when you have it scanning your C drive...and I have it set to do that when I am sleeping. I do have a 2.4ghz Core 2 Quad processor....

Second....I have never lost any data due to a virus. However back before I used a virus scanner....I did pretty much everything that you currently do. One day I decided to download Avira and it turned out that I had over 10 trojan viruses. Now....mind you...my system wasn't running any slower than normal....I don't remember what trojan they where, but from what I read on it.....it sends a ton of information out....including paswords and Credit cards. I was lucky that my credit cards wern't stolen, but my hotmail account was completely taken over and the person had used it to spam and send viruses to my friends and family. (NOT COOL) (I only visit my hotmail account about once a month and I had no idea about this happening)

I must admit that this happened back when I was downloading a lot of pirated material.(I have stoped doing that though)

My advice...your better to be safe than sorry.....also, What performance drop

That what I am wondering what performance drops are you guys seeing.... fresh re install of my 2004 laptop mind you it has an 1.800ghz processor 4 gb of ram though but when I installed Norton 2009 there was no performance drop the only performance drop ..... I would agree pree 2009 Norton wasn't that great but it did catch virus and anybody that goes to a computer store doesn't know enough and gets virus by allowing things and computer stores frankly I think are a jock and everybody that works there to their normally lazy do half ass jobs and over charge everybody..... Not saying you're like that but I would not take the advice from a computer store ever and when my friends have they have been royally screwed by them like common 200$ to back up your data? It's a joke..... But anyway I agree with Iskor12 better safe than sorry and what performances drops.... found a friend that had avira and must admit it looks like some good free stuff.

Bottom line you need something wither paid or not because the slight performance loss when your sleeping isnt worth the headache of re formatting and installing or even worse identity theft.

lookd into the new avast stuff and it seem they have gottne better since last time i have seen them so i would even recommend that stuf now : )

I use Avast also.

daguin said:

OK. My ISP is not up to speed with WIN7 yet. I need an antivirus/spy/malware program.

Suggestions oh WIN7 gurus?

Peace,
dave

Click to expand...

dave download the Avast PRO antivirus i will be giving you a 2 year SERIAL for that..

please see my PM..

dont worry that serial is my corporate serial which i use to install to computers..

i want you to have one.. thanks!


read my PM

matrixcs said:

dave download the Avast PRO antivirus i will be giving you a 2 year SERIAL for that..
please see my PM..
dont worry that serial is my corporate serial which i use to install to computers..
i want you to have one.. thanks!
read my PM

Click to expand...

Thank you so much.

+1

Peace,
dave

matrixcs said:

dave download the Avast PRO antivirus i will be giving you a 2 year SERIAL for that..

please see my PM..

dont worry that serial is my corporate serial which i use to install to computers..

i want you to have one.. thanks!


read my PM

Click to expand...

Brown Noser.....Jk That's rather nice of you

LOL.....

Ahaha I'm saving that one

There's actually a keygen for avast pro. Somehow avast will know if the serial is real or not when it updates the datebase, but well, then you generate another one and ready to go. You can stay like this for all the time you want, although having avira for free you just can forget about it... xD

I checked out Avira (free). I found 3 virus files on my PC but didnt find a running virus. I launched those files long ago, but cant understand why I dont have a virus running. I do know Norton picked up 2 and repaired them. I think Avira read those files as being still active, but they obviously were not. The third file I have no clue. Its says Injector.E' [trojan] but no other info, and once again no running virus. Also if you dont let it access the internet the Guard feature errors.

Hallucynogenyc said:

There's actually a keygen for avast pro. Somehow avast will know if the serial is real or not when it updates the datebase, but well, then you generate another one and ready to go. You can stay like this for all the time you want, although having avira for free you just can forget about it... xD

Click to expand...

KEYGEN! Illegal my friend but that means that you and myself ARE...

YouTube - Russell is a Pirate!