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[ianfreddie07]

Heya guys... I just wanted to ask if McAfee VirusScan Plus is a good antivirus or are there any better ones? I was thinking of getting:

1. Avira AntiVir
2. Avast!
3. Kaspersky

[Icewolf]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ianfreddie07 @ Aug 16 2007, 10:19 AM) [snapback]304825[/snapback]</div>

Heya guys... I just wanted to ask if McAfee VirusScan Plus is a good antivirus or are there any better ones? I was thinking of getting:

1. Avira AntiVir
2. Avast!
3. Kaspersky


[/b]

IMHO McAfee isn't THE best but allright.
I have very good experiences with AntiVir, though the update-notification is a bit annoying.
I heard lots of good stuff about Kaspersky but never checked it out. I think they don't really have a free version. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I only know Avast! by name.

I can recommend Grisoft Free AVG. I'm about to check out BitDefender (the free version of course).

[Japo]

AntiVir is the *free* AV with best detection. By the way the premium version isn't better AV, just includes email scanner and antispyware and of course spares you the ad, and grants you access through premium server to update. Other good free AVs are Avast and AVG Free.

The best AV *not* necessarily free are, I hear: Kaspersky has the best virus database and hence best detection; NOD32 has best heuristics and hence better protection against 0-day threats.

Although the most effective first protection layer is enjoying sensible Internet habits (never opening spam attachments and downloading carefully to start with). Scan everything you download through P2P before you open it. But of course you need a passive second (and possibly third etc.) layer.

[_r.u.s.s.]

and i recommend kaspersky but its payed
i personaly dont like nod32 cause it stuffs itself everywhere in to computer, where you dont want. and once i had a virus which infected every exe it came in touch in my pc (including nod32 AND all the new stuff i would download) and nod wasnt able to get rid of it, only kaspersky

[Japo]

By the way I wouldn't fall in the temptation to pirate AVs or any other security software, if you really don't like to pay use a free AV, they give more than enough protection to the average user. Because you can't be sure that some dark guy cracked the program out of the kindness of his hearth, maybe his motive was embedding malware into the AV, and thus distribute it with nearly assured success concerning full access to the victimized system. For the same reason download the program always from the owner's site (or from a mirror linked there), not from some dark downlod site.

[gregor]

so, since AVG Free doesn't seem to detect certain stuff and since my windows completelly crashed for the 3rd time (they simply didnt' load because certain driver file was corrupted - great job Micro$oft k: ) i decided to install Avira. i will do a full scan of the whole disk and see if the crashing oculd be a result of some undetected virus.

Anyway.... i have Zone Alarm installed. Now ZA tells me that some internet traffic is going on (even if i dont' do anything). Is this normal? is Avira having some constant internet traffic?

Becuase at first i though there is more windows installs, however after doing that all night i found out no new patches are ready for install. :blink:

[Japo]

Yes I think Avira AntiVir accesses the system's access gates on a regular basis, I would know because if I shut my firewall completely closed then AntiVir will lower its guard (even not being connected to the Internet). I guess it's monitoring what's coming in in case it's malicious, I don't know. Maybe ZA can provide you with a detailed activity log if you're that interested, or email Avira if you're really worried and the answer is not on their site's FAQ or something.

By the way ZA is the most popular free firewall but by no means the best one. I hear that the paid version is one of the best --although some users are starting to complain about bad support and resources hogging--, but the free version is too trimmed to be effective. The best free firewall is Comodo's, and many tests say that it's as good or better than any paid one.

The crashes needn't be caused by malware. Can you system restore to before they started happening? But do scan first of all.

[gregor]

hmm maybe i will try Comodo then...

no that's the problem. i couldn't not do system restore that's the main problme. i called microsoft and they said it is almost definatelly hardware problem. but didnt' know which hardware. no i will try and find some diagnostic utilities to scan the whole thing. according to them one driver file got corrupted and could not load propperly. who corrupted it? windows! cause if i boot in DOS it's OK.

so i was thinking maybe something wrong with disk (bad secotrs etc). i plan to do deep scan with their official diagnostics. initila scan shows everything is good.

heh since when i moved the SATA data cable a bit (you know just to see if it's in ok) bios didnt' recognise the disks. so i decided to replace the cable. so far so good. got windows up with no problems. once i get home from work i plan to do some scans and run diaghnostics just in case it is really hardware fault...

what could be faulty? disk is the only think i can think of. memory - i doubt it since it worked ok for 2 months even with some new games. same goes for graphics card. no problem in running anyhting. so that leaves me only at motherboartd (which again worked fine for 2 months and it's a new one) and hard disk. but hard disk seems fine, so i will do some deep scan for any bad sectors because chkdsk can not find any.

[Japo]

What OS do you have, Win9X or XP? It's normal that DOS loads fine since it won't use that driver. Another possibility in Win9X if that's what you're running is using a utility (under Accessories > System Tools I think) that checks if the drivers are different from the ones in the installation disc and refreshes them if they are. But that tool was removed and replaced with Sytem Restore for XP just for reason, because Win can't tell if a driver that changed was damaged or updated. And if you replace updated drivers with drivers from 1998 nothing will work. But maybe it would be worthwhile if it solves the problem, even if you have to re-install every program afterwards. But if you know the name of the faulty driver you can refresh only that one, that would be worth a try. Well the sore truth is that Win9X is a piece of crap and you'd be better off with XP. Also uncalled-for bluescreens are nothing to be surprised in Win9X, my solution to that and to the neverending progressive crippling of performance was periodically formatting the main partition and re-installing Windows and its programs (less than 1 hour procedure) while my data was in a separate partition.

That's if the problem was caused by software what would be good news I guess. About the hardware I really don't know, but it might as well be faulty or unproperly plugged, maybe the CPU was budged and something went off. Maybe you could open it and make sure everything is in place, just push very gently.

[gregor]

nah it's XP (bought them original once i saw how nicelly they worked in my other computer). that's why it's pissing me off. all those restore poins and all those GB of disk they take up and yet it can not restore itself propperly. not from a single RP. and i followed the instructions on microsoft site... but nothing changed.

yah if only i knew which driver has problems i could back it up on a floppy or something.