PC AV Software


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Old 11-20-11, 12:23 PM
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PC AV Software

I have been using WebRoot anti virus software for quite a few years. I have become increasingly dissatisfied with it's performance . It seems that lately most of my PC issues have been related to WebRoot Security Essentials. A couple of months ago a virus got by undetected and it really hosed my PC. WebRoots response was "sorry about that we can't catch them all. Send us money and we'll help you fix it"

I'm looking for advice on a replacement. I have been doing a little research on the net but of course everybody has a differing opinion on what's the best. I did read some reviews that put WebRoot on the low end. I'm thinking about buying Kaspersky but I don't know much about it.
 
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Old 11-20-11, 12:42 PM
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I see no reason to pay for any AV if you are careful in your habits. As you can see..the AV companies are not very responsive to problems. MS Security Essentials has been working very well for me for over a year. I used to have AVG but it couldn't get rid of something it should have caught in the first place. I tried all the typical stuff and only MSSE took it out completely.

Avast is supposed to be good, but I've never used it.
 
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Old 11-20-11, 12:47 PM
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Use Linux as your OS and you won't need an antivirus or malware detector. I know going with a non MS OS seems a bit scary but since you can use it for free and try it out without installing nothing to loose.
KDE Desktop » PCLinuxOS
 
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Old 11-20-11, 03:33 PM
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I'm gonna try it, Ray. I'm downloading it to a thumbdrive, so I've got about 2 hours of downtime.
 
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Old 11-20-11, 03:43 PM
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I think Ray owns stock in Linux....lol.

I did put it on my older laptop (that had French XP Pro when I got it) and it has been working just fine for what we need when traveling.

Doubt I'll ever put it on a desktop unless I build one from scrap. Very stable, plenty quick, just very different than any MS product.
 
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Old 11-20-11, 04:04 PM
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Yeah, Ray's continued enthusiasm about it has my interest piqued, so I gotta try it. Still 1.25 hours left, so it will be a while.
 
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Old 11-20-11, 04:17 PM
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Odd it's taking that long Larry. I don't remember it being near that for mine, and I had to burn it to a CD.
 
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Old 11-20-11, 04:43 PM
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Larry, are you doing a torrent instead of a direct download? Never tried thumb drive but I understand they can be sit up with presistant memory which means you can save any changes or files when you shut down.

I think Ray owns stock in Linux....lol.
I try not to mention it more then once a month so as not to be a pest. Also afraid someone will ask my help because then I'm screwed. The poser behind the curtain would be revealed. Believe it or not a Linux user can be as dumb as the average Windows user and just like the Windows user still get his work and play done. {LOL}
 
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Old 11-20-11, 06:30 PM
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No, Ray, I did a direct download from the link you provided. I did see "torrent", but figured it meant deadly fast water, so I stayed away. Got it downloaded to the thumbdrive. How do I start it? Didn't count on that one, did you?
 
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Old 11-20-11, 06:39 PM
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Your computer will need to be set to USB for first boot device in Bios. Then you just restart the computer with the USB drive pluged in.
 
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Old 11-20-11, 06:40 PM
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I knew that . No I didn't, until you mentioned it. Makes sense. Gone to bios. Thanks.
Back from Bios....."no bootable partition in table" shows up. I know the 650 MB is on the drive. I guess I'll need to research it further.
 

Last edited by chandler; 11-20-11 at 07:16 PM.
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Old 11-20-11, 10:47 PM
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I agree I like Microsoft Security Essentials but also think it has about the slowest scan engine especially if you do a full scan of your computer which I recommend at least once a month.
I also recommend AVG with reservations as it can gum up the works if you are running Windows 7 or at least it did and the status of that right now is unclear as I haven't checked Microsofts forum for a while now. I would steer clear of Avast as I had it once but it never seemed to do too well. Comodo I hear is good as an anti-virus and can be configured with their free suite with just the anti-virus or just a firewall or both. I use Comodos firewall currently and have been satisfied with it. So you have some good choices out there and all of them are free or if you want you can get paid versions of any of those that have a few extra bells and whistles.
The main thing to think about is the free versions for the most part offer little or no support but as you have found out paying for something doesn't guarantee good service especially with anti-virus products. I wish you luck!
 
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Old 11-25-11, 10:28 AM
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if you d/l the image, it's an ISO and is not bootable until you burn as disc image to CD with the proper software, or set up the USB thumb drive as bootable to ISO images with a front end program like grub

How to boot a bootable ISO from USB - The CD Forum
 
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Old 11-25-11, 11:52 AM
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What is It?

if you d/l the image, it's an ISO and is not bootable until you burn as disc image to CD with the proper software, or set up the USB thumb drive as bootable to ISO images with a front end program like grub
What are ISO images? Please explain.
 
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Old 11-25-11, 06:55 PM
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An ISO image is a uncompressed disk image file in an archive format, just like zip files are an archive format, so it's one big archive. It makes transport and storage ( uploading or downloading ) of disk images easier since all you have to do it copy the ISO rather than all the contents, sub directories that are inside the ISO image.

You will see the file you downloaded has the *.ISO file extension. ISO files are meant to be burnt to CD and then booted to. But they can be "mounted" via a front end loader that either simulates a CD Rom drive or extracts the contents it to RAM and then runs what ever is contained inside the ISO image,

You can burn the ISO to CD-R/DVD-R ( depending on the size of the ISO image ) with IMGBURN, which is free and an excellent Image burning tool, you can see what's inside the ISO by downloading UltraISO and running it in trial mode to peek inside the contents of the ISO image or extract the contents.
 
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Old 11-25-11, 07:04 PM
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Also as an added note, you can also extract the ISO to a regular directory using 7zip, which by the way is free. Don't know about PCLinux OS (yes ray still haven't gotten to try it ), but with Ubuntu, there is WUBI which is a way to install Ubuntu linux alongside Windows without causing too much issues. It installs just like a normal program.
 
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Old 11-27-11, 07:52 AM
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Linux aside

First of all, there is no 1 product that stands out and stops every virus, malware or whatever, it just doesn't exist, having said that, I've had great results from Vipre Antivirus, formerly owned by Sunbelt Software, recently purchased by GFI. I have many systems running in my home and they offer a 3-10 user site license at a very reasonable price. I used to swear by Norton products but the past several years, Norton has just let themselves decline rapidly. Most of the virus removal work that I do, are all running one version of Norton or another, usually 360, but that is a resource hog and misses many things that Vipre doesn't. It's worth looking in to if nothing else. They run adds all the time for a 1 year for $10.95 or something like that. You can also download a full working version for a 30 day trial at which point you have to buy or remove. 1 caution though, make absolutely certain you have NO other antivirus software installed because Vipre really hates to compete and I've seen it take down systems as a result of it. Usually they'll tell you there is another software package installed and that it should be removed before installing Vipre. Once Vipre is installed, you can run others on top of it but it has to be installed first! At least that has been my experience. If nothing else, download the free trial and see what it finds. best of luck! There are also a number of free online scanners than you can run, ie: f-secure online scanner, Trend micro House calls online scanner and the list goes on. I often run these as a secondary measure just to be sure Vipre hasn't missed any thing. So far...so good! But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong!
 
 

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