MSE now BSOD (antivirus survey)

[jiaco]

Gotta love the acronyms people.

Long story short, I did something super stupid on 2 machines after trusting negative scans from Malwarebites and MSE. Both machines went directly to BSOD on reboot. The one at work was easy, pop in a new drive, install xp to that and recover. The one at home I am trying to fix for 1 day before resorting to the inevitable. At work, Avira has found the culprit and at home an AVG bootCD found it too, but the damage has been done. It is crazy that some Trojan can get into the MBR (or whatever it has really done) and cause windows to be unable to boot and yet their MSE thing is totally oblivious to it.

Anyway, end of RANT, what I want to know is does anyone have anything positive to say about anti-virus programs? If so, which ones...

[vindictive]

Gotta love the acronyms people.

Long story short, I did something super stupid on 2 machines after trusting negative scans from Malwarebites and MSE. Both machines went directly to BSOD on reboot. The one at work was easy, pop in a new drive, install xp to that and recover. The one at home I am trying to fix for 1 day before resorting to the inevitable. At work, Avira has found the culprit and at home an AVG bootCD found it too, but the damage has been done. It is crazy that some Trojan can get into the MBR (or whatever it has really done) and cause windows to be unable to boot and yet their MSE thing is totally oblivious to it.

Anyway, end of RANT, what I want to know is does anyone have anything positive to say about anti-virus programs? If so, which ones...

hi

i use eset nod32 without any major problems i use windoze 7 64 bit
so it inter grates with windows updates and lets you know it needs your attention can be turned off though

regards john

[yerkyerk]

I use Avast, it's free and really haven't had any bad experiences with it. I'm not really into that kinda thing though, I just took the most convenient one. That being said, I think that by definition, an anti-virus program will only give negative experiences - an anti virus program is good if you never notice it's there. They slow down computers, need to be updated, give false alarms, block programs they shouldn't and probably miss a number of viruses as well. Even if they detect a virus you'll sometimes have to go through the problems of erasing it manually.

[Void(null)]

Was Malwarebyte up to date?

[jiaco]

Yes, everything was up to date...overnight scan shows the machine is riddled with trojans, too many deadlines and "have to have it now" one time software uses that lead to stupid behavior on my part.

The only thing clear to me now is that MSE will not be on any of the fresh installs. Looking towards Avira at the moment as its free and finding lots of stuff, at least it says "Luke Filewalker"...

[Executioneer]

i do not use avira, scans take a looooong time, and it also requires quite a chunk of memory, and sometimes hogs your computer.

personally i prefer NIS since it has a lot of options and customizable behaviour and updates all by itself without any notifications and also has silent mode. if you are playing or something and don't want to be disturbed, you can tick the option to supress any messages.

on the negative side, scans are not so fast but not as slow as avira. also until you familiarize yrself with the interface, could take sometime, but then u're ok to go.

on the plus side, it also has an ability to scan programs and help you determine if you want that file or not.

[OneEyeRed]

I have used Trend Micro for several years now and I won't change. I know some people complained about last years version getting slower but I have had zero issues with it. Furthermore, it is the only virus scan that has actually stopped viruses for me while also finding Malware.

A close friend of mine has been a network tech for a large corporation for years and he swears by it. McAfee and Norton run background garbage that does slow your system down. Word on the street is Norton has improved but for me I wouldn't touch either of those two ever again.

[yerkyerk]

McAfee and Norton run background garbage that does slow your system down. Word on the street is Norton has improved but for me I wouldn't touch either of those two ever again.
I'll never return to Norton... I used it way back in the day and it slowed everything down to a crawl. Later on, some friends used it and when they wanted to replace it, they couldn't, as Norton had infested their PC and was very hard to remove. I'm sure they improved their product by now, but I won't give them another chance unless I have to.

[Skellt]

At home im using avg free... Just because ive been too lazy to crack a full version of any i can find really... Ive never had big virus issues... And at any rate i format about once a year...

I mean now with win7 with my new comp a full format & reinstall takes less than 2h... Its much more fun to do a clean install and have your whole rig run faster afterwards.

Point being i really dont care bout antivus all that much as long as whatever i have blocks malwares thats good for me.

But the point of me posting here is to tell yas NEVER EVER use kaspersky... We use it at work and ive never had a worst experience.. ( ive tried a few over the years )it slows the comp like hell, annoying notifications, doesnt work all the time.. And upon installation it comes along with "i destroy your comp" sort of thing. The day i installed it, i started not being able to use my sound commands anymore bc it freezes my comp and i have to reboot... Great when you get a phonecall let me tell ya.

And its not as if it was only me.. My 2 bosses are havin same issue so... But they bought a 2 year licence yaya

[Rainier Wolfcastle]

For me i use AVG free like the above poster. I have ran it for the last 2 years on my rig (win7 64bit ultimate). Never had any issues with it. I particularly like how I am able to control the amount of system resources to devote to a virus scan. It makes it so I don't have to worry about stuff lagging while I am using the computer for other things while it scans. Just surfing the web i crank it up to the max. Some serious gaming i'll turn it down to medium. As far as free anti-virus is concerned in my professional opinion (8 years IT experience) this is easily the best option out there. Its not perfect but for free anti-virus it does the trick and has never failed me yet.

[Leon]

I use Avast! It's small, unobtrusive, free, and uses little system resources. Works well too - I have Malwarebyte's Anti-malware installed as a backup, and I've never needed to use it.

Also, I highly recommend CCleaner as well. Cleans up your registry and computer =3

[pts]

Also, I highly recommend CCleaner as well. Cleans up your registry and computer =3

Registry cleaning; For me it's the number one reason for having to reinstall windows. I've been avoiding it for quite a while now. The rest of CCleaner is great though!

[DragonWolf]

I like to use Avast, used to use AVG but something funny happened with it a couple of years ago so I switched.

[Psychogasm]

I've been using NIS for years and have never had any issues with viruses...mayb its because i have a really high end system or something because i've never had issues with slowdowns myself...but thats just me

[Ian]

Had too many problems with anti-virus programs over the years and never use one now - I just have Spy-bot on my system and that's all