# Any Recommendations For An Anti Virus Solution



## Wardy (Jul 23, 2003)

Hi All,

My Norton antivirus is coming to the end of it's subscription and to be honest while it did catch the three emails I did receive with a virus I have become disappointed with constant glitches, poor support and no end of re-installs. (also Nortons firewall nigh on crippled my pc and I now sit behind a netgear firewall router instead)

Does anyone use CA? or Nod32? any others recommended?

Cheers

Paul


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## ESL (Jan 27, 2004)

Well done Wardy, you have the 100,000th post.

AVG is pretty good for an absolutely free virus package. Well supported, bomb proof and regular updates. Just Google for it.


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## JoT (Aug 12, 2003)

I use McAfee anti-virus and firewall; had good support, automatic updates and no virus attacks.


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## Stan (Aug 7, 2003)

I use Norton firewall but not its Anti-virus solution, it bogs down the system too much.

AVG is very good but I'm currently using Antivir and this seems stable and effective so I'll stay with it for a while. There are daily updates but they are not automatic, though it's no chore to click on the internet update tab once a day really.


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## Paul (Mar 2, 2003)

Hi all,

Can't reccomend AVG free high enough. Easy to install, update and setup.

Paul D


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## Wardy (Jul 23, 2003)

ESL said:


> Well done Wardy, you have the 100,000th post.
> 
> AVG is pretty good for an absolutely free virus package. Well supported, bomb proof and regular updates. Just Google for it.
> 
> ...


100,000th post, bloody 'eck! Here's to Roys forum and the next 100,000
















Thanks for all the recomendations, will probably try AVG (can't lose out as it's free!)

Cheers


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## rhaythorne (Jan 12, 2004)

Wardy said:



> Does anyone use CA? or Nod32? any others recommended?


I use NOD32 at home and also use it at work to test suspicious files that the likes of Norton, Trend Micro and Sophos seem to have missed. It's by far the most capable AV product available in my opinion. The latest version now has integrated Anti-Spyware capabilities, although I wouldn't abandon your other Anti-Spyware protection just yet. The NOD32 user interface is a little cumbersome perhaps, but nowhere near as messy as AVG. Its great advantage is that it combines perhaps the best detection capabilities available with a very rapid scanning speed so it has a minimal impact on the performance of your computer. I liked NOD32 so much I bought the company a 5 user licence









AVG is good as a free alternative and I use it on one machine as a comparison product. It's history of detection rates is not good, although the latest version is a vast improvement compared to the earlier ones.

The bible for antivirus product comparisons is Virus Bulletin. It's a magazine to which you have to subscribe but there are usually a few group tests available on the website which for some reason isn't working at the moment. Maybe they got a virus


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## Roger (May 17, 2003)

I use the McAffee package, reasonably priced, well supported


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## Wardy (Jul 23, 2003)

rhaythorne said:


> The bible for antivirus product comparisons is Virus Bulletin. It's a magazine to which you have to subscribe but there are usually a few group tests available on the website which for some reason isn't working at the moment. Maybe they got a virus
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Cheers! I was trying to look at the Virus Bulletin site for some independant views but like you say it's down.

In your experience how often are updates issued? Are there any features in the likes of Norton/Mcafee that are missing in Nod32? I like the sound of the low overhead as even on my 3800+ machine with 1gb ram I notice the impact as I re-install Norton once again...........

Roger, I did install Mcafee security suite on the mother in-laws pc a while back and it has served her proud, cleaning the 9 virus from her machine, she though she didn't need anti virus if she only opened email attachments from her friends!!!


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## rhaythorne (Jan 12, 2004)

Wardy said:



> In your experience how often are updates issued? Are there any features in the likes of Norton/Mcafee that are missing in Nod32? I like the sound of the low overhead as even on my 3800+ machine with 1gb ram I notice the impact as I re-install Norton once again...........


Updates are issued _very_ quickly after a new outbreak has been identified and, in any case, usually occur at least once or twice on "quiet" days. An advantage of NOD32 is that its generic detection/heuristic scanning is also very capable. On several occasions I caught new variants of the Netsky and Bagle worms with NOD32 _before_ the official update was available and which were completely invisible to AV products from both Trend Micro and Sophos! Eset is still a relatively small company and is able to react quickly to new threats when it has to.

A true story about a big AV provider:

The company I work for was among the earliest to catch the "Love Bug" virus back in 2000. The virus orginated in Hong Kong and we have an office there. We spotted that we had some kind of infection almost immediately and submitted a suspect file to Symantec (who supplied our "Enterprise" version of Norton Anti-Virus at that time) for analysis. Symantec simply ran the file passed their _existing_ virus definitions and proudly reported that the file was clean! We tried to explain to them that this was obviously a _new_ virus that they didn't know about yet, but they just didn't believe us. Upon eventually realising their mistake (probably because by now hundreds of their other customers were telling them the same thing) they rushed out an update, but by then it was too late. The demand for the update was so immense that their servers couldn't cope and even the main website was anavailable for several hours. We dropped Symantec as a supplier for this reason.

As a footnote - Whilst trying to discover what this mysterious new virus was, I stumbled upon a little Indian company in Pune who had a product called CAT Quickheal, a variation of which is still around today. Their update for Love Bug was available long before Symantec's so I decided to try the product at home. I found a few bugs in the program and dropped the company an email. A few hours later I had a reply with attached patches that had also been made available on the website. When it comes to safeguarding my computer and the data stored on it, _that's_ the kind of rapid response I'm looking for


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## peterc (Jun 23, 2003)

Have a look at Panda Antivirus. Great virus scanner which includes a firewall and spyware tool. I used to use AVG but as someone mentioned, its detection rate was not the best and when it did find something it often couldn't remove it...


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## ventmore (Jul 18, 2005)

rhaythorne said:


> Wardy said:
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> 
> 
> ...


Another vote here for NOD32. It is by far the best AV package I have ever used, and as said it is extremely fast with a low system overhead. The price is also pretty good when compared to the other major packages.

Cheers

Neil


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## Wardy (Jul 23, 2003)

Cheers for all the replies, been doing some research on Nod32 and it does appear to be the front runner, got a about a month to go before Norton runs out so I'll give an update in a while on how I get on with Nod32...................

Anyone know how to totally remove Norton from my machine


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