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What Anti-Virus do you use


rridgely

What AV do you use?  

304 members have voted

  1. 1. What AV do you use?

    • Antivir
      42
    • Avast
      75
    • BitDefender
      8
    • ClamWin
      1
    • eTrust
      0
    • F-Prot
      0
    • F-Secure
      1
    • AVG/Grisoft
      15
    • Kaspersky
      22
    • McAfee
      9
    • Nod32
      27
    • Norton
      22
    • Panda
      4
    • TrendMicro
      3
    • Microsoft Security Essentials
      29
    • Other
      32
    • None
      20


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Malwarebytes Anti Malware kicks butt over AVG. How can you not compare and contrast? Is that the problem? Comparing and contrasting?

 

That depends on what you call kicking butt. Have you used AVG 2012 (as opposed to the older versions 2009, 2010, etc?). There are a number of improvements in the newer versions, & also no antivirus is perfect, Norton nearly takes over your PC & slows it down, while McAfee just doesn't seem to ever work right for me (meaning protection wise).

 

Avast seems to have a higher false positive rate, & has trouble removing certain things it finds, while Avira has to have a global policy set to block the daily advertisement in the Avira folder.

 

AVG seems to use few system resources & does a decent job.

_____

 

Things to remember when talking about an Antivirus:

 

* All Antiviruses use Definition sets (Constantly updated to keep up with new viruses.)

* Most Antiviruses include Heuristics (Try to find viruses based on pattern behavior.)

_____

 

Now, as you might imagine, there are problems with both of these approaches regardless of AV vendor. Definition based means if a new virus comes out, you can be infected before the update for it is pushed out.

 

Heuristics sometimes flag false positives & delete files that aren't viruses. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not.

_____

 

When comparing AVG (Or any AV, really) to Malwarebytes, you have to remember that AVG is an Anti-VIRUS while Malwarebytes is an Anti-MALWARE program.

Meaning, what they look for is different.

 

You could also go out on a limb & say that Webroot Spysweeper kicks Malwarebytes butt. But that would be irrevelant, because Spy Sweeper installs itself in such a way that there have been problems with a number of installations due to how they protect their definition sets folder & install in a certain way that can cause certain computers to crash.

 

I was experimenting earlier with it years back, & their definitions are virtually impossible to manually move or update because they are marked system/read only/etc/etc.

They have some other protection as well, because it is impossible to move the files in that folder. Always errors out. Unless you use Unlocker or some other program. To date, I have not had time to experiment to see what attribute or feature is causing this, but I might try again sometime in the future.

_____

 

Malwarebytes does not generally cause these problems, so to just say Malwarebytes is better because you had a positive experience with it doesn't make sense.

If you have certain malware, yes it is a good program & yes it does find quite a bit. But I have also seen malware that Malwarebytes could not fix & had to use Combofix or some other utility to remove it.

_____

 

Hope this clarifies things a bit & helps you realize the difference in the two. Not necessarily better, just a different type of nasties it looks for...

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  • 1 month later...

Switched to Norton at the beginning of this year. So far, so good. No major issues. Also use the free versions of Malwarebytes & SuperAntiSpyware.

 

Had major system slowdown & conflict issues with my previous a/v.

Win10 Pro x64 Desktop (Speccy) - Win10 Pro x64 Laptop (Speccy)

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Nikki, I used Norton before, but I detested the way it infested everything in the computer, & tried to be a little do it all app with it's own firewall, A/V, cleanup utility, etc. Have had it flag a few false positives, but overall, nothing too major usually.

 

Besides that, I hated how the subscription key would run out & you'd have to but another one in 3 to 6 months.

 

AVG free subscription lasts a year & is lite on resources. Gives relatively few problems.

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On both my WinXP desktop & Win7 x64 laptop, I found NIS to be lighter on system resources than BDAV. So far there have been no false positives. The subscription I have is for a year and hasn't nagged me any sooner.

 

Over the years, I have been through several a/v products. At first, most were OK. But over the years and new releases, most developed problems that forced me to move on. Only time will tell if I change my mind about NIS. ;)

Win10 Pro x64 Desktop (Speccy) - Win10 Pro x64 Laptop (Speccy)

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  • Moderators

nikki605 you put things in a nutshell there really.

 

Quite often what works well for one person doesn't for another.

 

Most of us on here, like you, have been through different avs over the years. I just use whatever works well with the software on my pc at the time. Some avs are labelled as rubbish by users when in fact it's software conflict that is causing the problems.

 

Also some avs are just badly designed and not user friendly.

 

Support contact

https://support.ccleaner.com/s/contact-form?language=en_US&form=general

or

support@ccleaner.com

 

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I agree with - "I just use whatever works well with the software on my pc at the time.". Discussing a/v products can be as argumentative as religion and politics. I try to avoid those discussions. ;)

 

The one basic rule I do follow is NOT to have multiple a/v programs with real time protection installed at the same time. The biggest problem I have found is uninstalling an a/v program. Even using the company's "removal tool" will sometimes leave remnants behind - files, folders but mostly Registry entries. I've spent hours carefully investigating and manually removing leftover Registry entires. I've also found leftover hidden System Devices in Device Manager. :angry:

Win10 Pro x64 Desktop (Speccy) - Win10 Pro x64 Laptop (Speccy)

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  • 2 weeks later...

I only use the (Comodo) firewall (free), so don't know about other Comodo products. Don't even use Defense+ and/or Sandbox which are included in the firewall software.

Never had problems.

Same goes with Avira AntiVir (only use the AV, free)

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • Moderators

MSE has jumped version numbers from 2.x to 4.x

 

I have updated it. So far, so good.

 

I updated on 24 April 2012 and completely removed it a few hours ago because the last three days it had been causing my system to freeze randomly.

 

Interestingly enough I found this in the Event Viewer log:

The Microsoft Antimalware Service service failed to start due to the following error:
The system cannot find the path specified.

 

For me it's fairwell MSE, at least on this XP system.

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Maybe it's a glitch in the XP version.

 

Probably is. Luckily I hadn't installed or updated anything new since MSE v4 so it was easy to figure out the culprit. I'm happily using Avast v7 now, and I thought I'd never use Avast again.

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Installed MSE 4.x on a pseudoinfected XP machine (SP3), after cleaning it, and it worked for me. Or, at least, I didn't notice anything out of normal.

 

Eventually I formatted it and installed MSE 4.x again. No issues either...

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  • 2 weeks later...

I use avast free anti-virus. the array of shields and protection is wonderful for a free program..How on earth can you knock this program when you see the protection it provides at no cost to the user.we should be very thankful to the avast team for giving us this lovely free anti virus. :D

online armor firewall.

Avast free anti virus.

Malwarebytes .

SuperAntiSpyware.

Hitman Pro.

Sandboxie.

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I was tinkiering with a PC with AVAST installed yesterday and It showed some annoying ads.

 

That's one drawback of the ad-supported free version, and it would be nice if they'd do something like Panda Cloud Antivirus which lets you very easily hide the adverts and remembers that setting choice.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I use NIS-2012 & Webroot SecureAnywhere Essentials (Prevx).

 Late 2015 5K 27" Mac, 4GHz i7, 16GB RAM, 1TB Fusion Drive: macOS Catalina 10.15.7 
 iMac Clone and Backup with: SuperDuper, Time Machine & iCloud 
aka ~ "Popeye" on the Malwarebytes Forum.
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  • 1 month later...

New laptop, new AV. Have decided to give Panda Cloud AV a run after only running Avira for last couple of years and so far, so good. Even if it does require so little interaction, and give no notifications of any sort, I had to download a test virus to just to satisfy myself that it was actually doing anything :D

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Does Panda Cloud also provide e-mail protection (attachments, etc.) when using an e-mail client?

No, but then it would pick up any malicious attachment as soon as soon as you downloaded or tried to run it anyway.

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