Best Virus Detector

I'm currently running Norton Corporate v7 and it's getting old so I'm looking to purchase a new virus scanner. Norton Corporate v9 is out, is it any good? I've also heard that regular Norton Internet Security 2005 and PC-Cillin 2005 are also good as well.

What are some thoughts on this?

 

Hi,
A new antivirus is something we always want to do right. Viruses, spyware, malware, trojans etc. are on the increase, it seems that 15 minutes on the internet is all you need to get infected. But some expensive products such as #norton and Panda are underperformers if compared with free antivirus like AVG. On my experience (i got Norton 2005 and AVG running in my PC) the free AVG antivirus has spotted viruses when the expensive Norton didn't. Last wednesday for example, I tried running Norton first which reported "no virus found", and then running AVG inmediately after and the result was 2 viruses found. Ibero dialer 10.BI and dialer 8.B.
So, to be honest i don't know if i will renew Norton antivirus next year when probably you will be better protected for free with lets say....AVG antivirus and Zone alarm firewall both for free.
Ah, i was forgetting something very important, AVG up to date their virus database and threads EVERY DAY, NORTON AND SYMANTEC PRODUCTS UP TO DATE ONLY ANY WEDNESDAY.

 

My networking teacher strongly recommends AVG and so do I. I've ran it on three computers and so far its found all the viruses and made the computers significantly better. Norton tends to use up a lot of backround processes, this slows down start up times and overall computer performance. AVG is the best anti-virus software i've ever come across.

 

I'm curious about you smart people's opinions when comparing AVG to AntiVir ( the two most popular downloads on MG). I was with AVG for a while, but I heard some not so nice things about the new AVG 7. About this same time, I noticed that AntiVir had surpassed AVG in the # of downloads, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Anyone with experience with both care to way the pros and cons of each?

 

I am a Norton System Works User but I have to say I would go with AVG cause this guys are right. All though I don't care if it takes up lots of ram to run it cause I am running 2gigs of Ram so the typical user would use 256mb or 512mb of ram. So I would recomend AVG for a typical user like yourself....But I still think that Norton System Works really Works...You just have to know how to use it and how to run it...lol...

 

I've heard AVG is good, but v7 isn't?

Would it be worth to get the pay version of AVG over the free one?

I've also heard Antivir is good too, but I have no experience with it.

 

I use avg 4.5 pro because its not a rescource hog like many others (also runs silent), and I double check (scan) for free once a month at Trend
Trend free scan

I have used Norton, mcafee,trend, and a few others not worth mentioning.
I was using Norton a few yrs back when they were targeted with a virus, hmm, can't remember the name, anyhow Avast 4.0 (free) snatched a worm and a couple other viruses on first reboot

 

I LOVE Avast. It's free.Uses little resources updates very frequently and speedily compared to Norton and it has saved my bacon on numerous occasions.
That said I believe the free version of AVG is also very good
Cheers
Robert

 

Be very cautious about the latest version of AVAST. When I tried it, my computer completely bogged down. 15 to 20 minutes between mouse clicks and associated action. 15 minutes to shut down.

It took 5 hours to get into the process flow to find out what was causing it and shut it down. Was on the point of external boot, reformat and reinstall OS, it was that bad. Apparently AVAST went into a continuous scan (not documented, of course) and hogged ALL system resources.

Finally managed to get it uninstalled and everything back to normal. Several people that I've talked to have experienced the same problem.

Of course, there is no response from AVAST support on the matter.

 

The main complaint I've heard (on the AVG support forums) about AVG 7 free is that AVG released a beta version and called it finished... Things like Crashing the system, BSODs, Freezing the system..... you get the idea.

To be fair, AVG 7 free had no noticeable affect on my (crippled) desktop... (you know, the one that is at the computer doctor right now for non-AVG issues) But I didn't want to take the chance on the Wife's Laptop, so I switched to AntiVir instead of upgrading her laptop....

I was just starting to worry that maybe I'd chosen a substandard AV prog... the only reason I chose it was because it was the most-downloaded here on MG.

 

I've heard lots of good things about NOD32, what are some thoughts on it?

 

Just curious, are you running 2 antivirus at the same time? Or do you just run each program seperately? Usually it's not suggested to run 2 antivirus on one machine, since it slows everything down, and, if I remember correctly, they actually can work against eachother, but I could be wrong on that last part.

You said you found 2 viruses when you scanned. You should have AVGs resident shield running in the background at all times, to prevent infection. The goal is prevention, not just detection.

And, Avast has been found to be the best of the 3 Anitvirus: AVG and AntiVir are also very good, but they are not quite as thorough as Avast. AVG will sometimes have a hard time removing an infection once it does find one.

Most people here detest the sluggishness of Nortons, and the fact that it costs, when there are better free products available.

Hope this all helps.

Eric

 

Really? I'd like to have a peek at THAT discussion...

 

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=49756&highlight=avast

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=49169&highlight=avast

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=48894&highlight=avast

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=48324&highlight=avast

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=48345&highlight=avast

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=47324&highlight=avast

 

Lots of adivce,very confuseing eh! I had the same problem when I switched. I still had a paid subscription for McAfee virus scan 8 but was haveing troubles with it so I did what you did,see advice from the gurus here at MG. I tried avast but had problems getting it to run right, I'm sure it was me though not avast, it comes highly recommened my many here. I have been useing avg for some time now and am very happy with it. My brother was in the same situation you are with norton,I convinced him to try avg before renewing and he is very happy with it. You might want to try avg for a while then try the paid version for free(30 days I think) before you deceide.

 

Annorax wrote:

I've heard lots of good things about NOD32, what are some thoughts on it?


I have been using NOD32 for a years now and it is great using almost no resource and catching everething that come my way......

And i don't even have a firewall do not needed i have window XP pro SP1a.

And the definitions files it's updated everydays.....

 

Been using NOD32 for 8 months now. The advanced heuristics are good, so far no false positves. Supposedly NOD32 is good for catching "zero-day" infections. The HTTP scanner is also a nice addtion. Before thier trojan detection wasn't so good, but they seem to be making improvements in that department... I have been checking Jotti's online malware scanner from time to time and NOD32 seems to be catching most of the malware that Kaspersly flags, which is good. Even though they are moving forward in the trojan department I still use an Anti-trojan program.

http://virusscan.jotti.dhs.org/

 

Hi
In the past few months I've used Bullguard, Avast and AVG, Of the tree progs I've found that AVG is the easiest and so far most reliable AV. Bullguard kept giving false virus alerts and even contacting their supprt couldn't clear it up. Since going back to AVG they have upgraded to AVG7 which is asier and more friendly to use than before.

Ken

 

Not sure which is the best,but uk.trend micro,housecall online scan is java based and can be used with other OS and other browsers.