antivir vs avast

i have antivir on my computer my friend had it too but decided to remove it and download avast she told me avast found several viruses on her computer that she didnt even know she had

she said the only downside is its a resourse hog and takes practically all day just to scan for viruses ect

so i was wondering is avast better then antivir and is it easyer to use id love some opinions on both programs please oh and thanks in advance

moumantai

 

I won't take sides in any antivirus application recommendations, but will say that I use Avast also and haven't found it to be a resource hog!! The problem that your friend referred to was probably a manual scan which takes time on any system that it is performed on, and is a good idea on any system that a new antivirus application is installed on, after it is updated. After the initial scan the on-access scanners kick in, and all files are scanned automatically upon receipt. Hope this helps!

 

I agree with Novice, I was running AVG before with no real problems until there recent updates, things went mad, so I switched to Avast. The only real big scan it does it the first one after installation, then its plain sailing from there. There are a few advantages to Avast that I found, If you are running windows 64bit its the only free virus software that runs without any hitches and as your friend stated it does seem to pick up on more viruses than other virus scanners. On the downside though I did fill my pants when a creepy voice blared out over my speakers that the AVAST had just been updated , I wasnt expecting that one.

 

That was my experience as well, now I am used to it.

 

If she is running Avast on Win9x it might be a resource hog. They have practically dumped that with regards to "optimizations". Also if many "providers" are active it will of course eat more ram. Set it up as Antivir and I doubt there is big difference.

I have used Avast for 2 years or so, never a problem with updates or anything but dont think it is that much better in detection. Has some nice features not found in many other scanners, like support for 7zip files. So if she had some of those, or 7zip selfextracting exe-files, Avast can check for virus - Antivir cant. Still resident shield in Antivir, or AVG for that matter, should kick in once virus try to load so result will be the same. Manual scan will also take longer the more supported compressed file types, only a good thing.

If you know what you are doing you can tune Avast by excluding certain filetypes, folders. Enable balloon tips and you see which files are scanned the most. Consider excluding relevant folder. Might not be safe but depends on how you manage computer, naturally "*\windows\*.* give a nice boost

Web Shield provider might be a troublemaker with memory but depends on setup. See their forum for known problems and fixes - compatibility with other tools like Zonealarm for example.

Those voices are wav-files in /Avast/English folder - change them to something less scary.

 

i use xp i dont know what my friends setup is but im guessing its the same as mine but i could be wrong she tells me that it takes forever for her to get windows updates when thier installing

and it took forever for antivir to scan too

she might have millinium or earlyer

 

Try click on add/remove programs in control panel. If many entries that will make resident scanner work hard. Activating that balloon popup window in Avast is really neat and you get an idea of whats going on.

Anyway, I think I would use Antivir 6 on old OS. Pretty sure Avast will need some tuning to compete, does too much and as said they hardly do any more optimizing for W9x. Over and out. Avast used to be a hog, no more on W2K and up. Dont know anything about new Antivir 7, old one should continue to coexist?

Windows update can take a while to install, does not have to be AV related. Think she will notice real AV-delays easy, like that add/remove test.

One thing is OS, another hardware. Old slow hardware will not like AV activity. May be not possible to fix except to simply lower security like excluding folders.