Heisenberg AV?

Damnit, it was the wrong one.

downstairs: Most anti-virus programs are so bloated, I'd count them as malware. So this is a refreshing step in the right direction.

Done in one.

styckx: Do people still use AVG? I stopped once they sold out and went the way of the crippling bloatware route.

Avira != AVG

/Still running AVG without issue.

I knew the Terminator 2 algorithm was a bad idea.

styckx: Avast free still chugging along fine for me for a few years now. Lightweight and just works.

Agreed; only complaint is that it's too buggy to use while playing video games. (Thankfully it's pretty easy to disable.)

Avast is probably the best of the free ones. It's consistently better than Norton, faster, stays out of your way, and free for home use. The only false positives I ever get from it are for Gameguard updates, and since Gameguard pretty much is a trojan, it's not surprising just nearly all AV programs detect it as one from time to time.

LesserEvil: I love Avira, and would easily purchase the premium version except for one big thing (and it's a problem with all of the others too): The idiots running the signature databases have decided that all keygens/patchers should be tagged as trojans. They aren't. Not even close, I have never observed any trojan-like behavior on ANY of the keygens Avira and many other anti-virus apps have identified as such. No "droppers", no TSRs, no malicious code, no root kits. Nothing. Not even a rogue registry entry or a file left somewhere. NOTHING. Yet anti-virus makers seem to have teamed up to give them a mysterious scarlet letter. Terrible practice.

I hate false positives, and it doesn't give me the warm and fuzzies about the capabilities of these virus scanners when they do this.

Yep.

I still like Avira, though, if for no other reason than it's easy to turn on and off.

meat0918: Could an AV be hijacked to delete system files?

McAfee has that covered. Best of all, no hijacking required!

But does it still respect itself in the morning?

/meh

I like Rising free antivirus.
For PCs anyway.

That's why I use AntiVirus System 2011. I had no idea how many infections I had before this showed up on my system somehow.

Superevil: That's why I use AntiVirus System 2011. I had no idea how many infections I had before this showed up on my system somehow.

Me too. I had like 100 megs of child porn and didn't even know it!

Flappyhead: Superevil: That's why I use AntiVirus System 2011. I had no idea how many infections I had before this showed up on my system somehow.

Me too. I had like 100 megs of child porn and didn't even know it!

Amatuer

meat0918: I've been wondering. Could an AV be hijacked to delete system files?

Not that you'd want to, what with the money to be made just hijacking the system and installing a keylogger or something.

Theoretically yes depending on your definition of system files, they have fairly high permissions. However attacking the actual OS is usually much easier and more fruitful at the same time, I don't know why anyone would attempt to.

Is this where I get smug and say I don't have a virus problem because I have a Mac and a Linux box?

Happy Hours: Im_Gumby: styckx: Do people still use AVG? I stopped once they sold out and went the way of the crippling bloatware route.

Avira != AVG

/Still running AVG without issue.

I am not sure if it's AVG or Win7 or this new farking Acer laptop, but something sucks big time. It regularly stops working - it has taken 30 farking minutes to reboot a few times (and I've only had it 3 weeks). Is it Win7? Is it Acer hardware? WTF?

And actually it's not surprising that an anti-virus program would detect itself. It's actually kind of impressive.

Acer sucks just in general* (and tend to be really cheap, really non-powerful laptops). AVG is bloated (though I didn't think it was that bloated). That combo sometimes does weird things. Try pulling off AVG and putting on Microsoft Security Essentials, and checking your start-up programs for weird/unnecessary things. If that doesn't fix it, toss the laptop
or see if you can return it, and get a better laptop (and look at reviews first).

Off the top of my head, that sounds like a shiatty hard drive (Is it 5400 RPM? If yes, it's shiatty) coupled with a)an overzealous antivirus that is constantly scanning your disc or b)not enough RAM (so it's continuously reading/writing memory to disc). When running:

1) see if the disc access light is always on or you can always hear the whirring of the disc
2) pull up task manager and see if you're ever over 80% of RAM. At bare minimum, you should have 4 GB in your system.

If yes to either of those, you're almost certainly waiting on disc most of the time.

*Anandtech reviewed an Acer laptop that got so hot it was continuously throttled, because the thermals were just that bad.

Happy Hours: I am not sure if it's AVG or Win7 or this new farking Acer laptop, but something sucks big time. It regularly stops working - it has taken 30 farking minutes to reboot a few times (and I've only had it 3 weeks). Is it Win7? Is it Acer hardware? WTF?

Acer isn't exactly known for top-quality hardware, but still... sounds like you got a lemon.

AV Discussion! Woot.

I personally use and enjoy ESET NOD32. Compact, lightweight, and it gets the job done!

Another one of my computers is doing long term testing of MSE (Security Essentials). Plan on swapping over to ESET in another few months to see if anything snuck past.

meyerkev:
Acer sucks just in general* (and tend to be really cheap, really non-powerful laptops).

*Anandtech reviewed an Acer laptop that got so hot it was continuously throttled, because the thermals were just that bad.


hmm.. based on ONE frigging machine you figured that???



_{/running several Acer machines, desktops,laptops and netbooks with not a single issue.. and my desktop could probably blast yours into a third rate joke.}

imfallen_angel: hmm.. based on ONE frigging machine you figured that???

It's called quality control. With a lot of hardware vendors, it's pretty obvious they don't test machines before they ship 'em.

Oh crap, you divided by the identity.

Happy Hours: I am not sure if it's AVG or Win7 or this new farking Acer laptop, but something sucks big time. It regularly stops working - it has taken 30 farking minutes to reboot a few times (and I've only had it 3 weeks). Is it Win7? Is it Acer hardware? WTF?

And actually it's not surprising that an anti-virus program would detect itself. It's actually kind of impressive.

If you really want to find what the probem is... a few steps

1) try to remember when you got the machine (new)... how was it?

2) was there something done, a time that you found that it slowed down.

3) open task manager and check what's running in the background. anything that shouldn't be running, or that you can stop without crashing the machine, do so, one thing at a time and check if you have a difference in speed. Best if you remove all internet access for this testing.

4) run a defrag, run a hard drive test, run a disk cleaner, and a registry cleaner (I recommend Glary)

5) get Spybot install (but be sure to not install the tea timer crap) and run it through

6) get rid of all anti-virus and get Avast instead

7) stop downloading stuff from weird sites and stop clicking the popups, regardless if it's offering you an awesome penis enlargement or you might get millions from an African prince.

If all fails... consider reformatting the machine, and doing it right. I've seen a fair share of machines that simply didn't install the OS correctly for some obscure result, and somehow has messed up the registry in such a way that it simply doesn't run right.

If you do all of these, and still no better, then consider bringing it to a store... it's possibly defective, either the RAM, motherboard, hard drive, even the graphic card,

MrEricSir: imfallen_angel: hmm.. based on ONE frigging machine you figured that???

It's called quality control. With a lot of hardware vendors, it's pretty obvious they don't test machines before they ship 'em.

And like cars, you can get one that test fine and then have it go bad a few days later when a solder come lose, it gets exposed to vibration or heat, or get a faulty part (like the capacitor fiasco for both HP and IBM a few years back)... etc.

Shiat happen, and unless it's constant, odds are, it's the exception.

But to judge a brand/manufacturer over a single experience is ridiculous.

imfallen_angel: meyerkev:
Acer sucks just in general* (and tend to be really cheap, really non-powerful laptops).

*Anandtech reviewed an Acer laptop that got so hot it was continuously throttled, because the thermals were just that bad.


hmm.. based on ONE frigging machine you figured that???

[i478.photobucket.com image 100x75]

/running several Acer machines, desktops,laptops and netbooks with not a single issue.. and my desktop could probably blast yours into a third rate joke.

No, based on the average of my and my friends's/family's experiences with our various laptops/desktops. I'd say that on average, Acer's are just cheap and not necessarily bad.

With that said, if you get lucky and don't get a poor design or bad computer, Acer's ARE cheap, and are actually quite good deals if you do your research first. Probably wouldn't recommend one because they're cheap for a reason, but I won't laugh at you for having a bunch and liking them.

//Also, I doubt you could beat my desktop. I got it last August after my internship, and spent about $1000 ($2000 if you count the 3 screens) more than was strictly necessary and I freely admit it.

Just to add to that last one..

An example:Maxtor drives... are very well known to have had truly bad years in the end (before Seagate bought them).

I would inform people to be weary about them, not due to one drive going bad on me, but several within a year, from different batches, different models, and having others telling me of very similar experiences.

Same with Norton... every technical person I know (that is competent) agrees that Norton is as bad as a virus, and the first thing they (and I) will do with a faulty machine, is to remove the blasted thing.... solving most of the problems that we're there to fix.

meyerkev: No, based on the average of my and my friends's/family's experiences with our various laptops/desktops. I'd say that on average, Acer's are just cheap and not necessarily bad.

With that said, if you get lucky and don't get a poor design or bad computer, Acer's ARE cheap, and are actually quite good deals if you do your research first. Probably wouldn't recommend one because they're cheap for a reason, but I won't laugh at you for having a bunch and liking them.

//Also, I doubt you could beat my desktop. I got it last August after my internship, and spent about $1000 ($2000 if you count the 3 screens) more than was strictly necessary and I freely admit it.

1) from the advice you gave... sorry, no insult really meant, but doesn't sound like you know much about computers.

2) my machine is a 2,600$ (no monitor included) quad core, liquid cooled, maxed out RAM beast that can be overclocked up to 4Ghz, and uses an internal 4 RAID array.

The only way I could upgrade would be to go with a 2+GB graphic card.

Bring it on....

It can detect itself, but can it successfully remove itself?

opps... forgot to state... 21+ TB on this machine....

How much do you have ... ?

_{/and... maybe I shouldn't mention the several other computers of my home network (most being dual and other quad cores)
/adjusting my tie}

OlderGuy: Wow.. that must be one hell of a porn library !!!

Nah... just m DVDs collection transferred over... probably getting close to 5,000 movies now and over 150 TV series...

Cancelled cable/satellite services about two years ago... never looked back.

Immunet FTW, drop all the bloatware.

imfallen_angel: 1) from the advice you gave... sorry, no insult really meant, but doesn't sound like you know much about computers.

2) my machine is a 2,600$ (no monitor included) quad core, liquid cooled, maxed out RAM beast that can be overclocked up to 4Ghz, and uses an internal 4 RAID array.

The only way I could upgrade would be to go with a 2+GB graphic card.

Bring it on....

1) What would you have said differently? Insane bootup times, at least in my experience, usually means slow/broken HDD + some combination of: bloated anti-virus + lots of start-up programs + nowhere near enough RAM. I managed to drop boot times by 15 minutes on my fathers desktop (P4 w/ 512 MB RAM from 2004) just by upgrading to 2 GB RAM, and switching from McAfee to MSE.

2) I think we're about tied. (All hardware guesses are assuming you built roughly this time last year). You've got way more HDD space (21TB to my 6), water cooling over air cooling, and if you went X58, more RAM, because you'll have the 6 slots to my 4, but I've got a slightly faster CPU(i7-2600k - 4.3GHz @ 1.29V vs. I'm guessing i7-920 or i7-860) and way more GPU (CFX 6970's vs whatever 5xxx card you have), and probably a better SSD now that the BSOD problems have been "fixed"(240 GB Vertex 3). Either way, we're both at the point of ridiculous, and we're both quite happy with our builds.

meyerkev: 1) What would you have said differently? Insane bootup times, at least in my experience, usually means slow/broken HDD + some combination of: bloated anti-virus + lots of start-up programs + nowhere near enough RAM. I managed to drop boot times by 15 minutes on my fathers desktop (P4 w/ 512 MB RAM from 2004) just by upgrading to 2 GB RAM, and switching from McAfee to MSE.

2) I think we're about tied. (All hardware guesses are assuming you built roughly this time last year). You've got way more HDD space (21TB to my 6), water cooling over air cooling, and if you went X58, more RAM, because you'll have the 6 slots to my 4, but I've got a slightly faster CPU(i7-2600k - 4.3GHz @ 1.29V vs. I'm guessing i7-920 or i7-860) and way more GPU (CFX 6970's vs whatever 5xxx card you have), and probably a better SSD now that the BSOD problems have been "fixed"(240 GB Vertex 3). Either way, we're both at the point of ridiculous, and we're both quite happy with our builds.

1) go read up.. I gave the advice on the approach he should take to troubleshot his machine... more than that, he'd be better to simply bring it to a competent tech.

2) I do a lot of video work on mine, what do you do on yours?

imfallen_angel: meyerkev: 1) What would you have said differently? Insane bootup times, at least in my experience, usually means slow/broken HDD + some combination of: bloated anti-virus + lots of start-up programs + nowhere near enough RAM. I managed to drop boot times by 15 minutes on my fathers desktop (P4 w/ 512 MB RAM from 2004) just by upgrading to 2 GB RAM, and switching from McAfee to MSE.

2) I think we're about tied. (All hardware guesses are assuming you built roughly this time last year). You've got way more HDD space (21TB to my 6), water cooling over air cooling, and if you went X58, more RAM, because you'll have the 6 slots to my 4, but I've got a slightly faster CPU(i7-2600k - 4.3GHz @ 1.29V vs. I'm guessing i7-920 or i7-860) and way more GPU (CFX 6970's vs whatever 5xxx card you have), and probably a better SSD now that the BSOD problems have been "fixed"(240 GB Vertex 3). Either way, we're both at the point of ridiculous, and we're both quite happy with our builds.

1) go read up.. I gave the advice on the approach he should take to troubleshot his machine... more than that, he'd be better to simply bring it to a competent tech.

2) I do a lot of video work on mine, what do you do on yours?

See, lupus is an autoimmune disease, where your immune system attacks your own tissues, so this is kind of like... eh, forget it.

imfallen_angel
meyerkev

I'd say you both need to be at the gym in 26 minutes, but we all know that's not true.

/yeah, but can it run crysis?

Baryogenesis: imfallen_angel
meyerkev

I'd say you both need to be at the gym in 26 minutes, but we all know that's not true.

/yeah, but can it run crysis?

ran the tester (for the heck of it) at some point, and yup but as I mentioned, I could probably upgrade my video card to run at max resolution... I think mine was at one below max, unless I switched my card to share system RAM.

When P2P File sharing came out some one I know down loaded almost every anti virus program there is .. and installed them all at the same time ....... Then the programs discovered each others virus definition files and they went to War .

McCaffe, symanic AVG Dr something -- all these pop ups and sirens a bells and klaxons and error messages would fill the screen the moment . I was in awe ... of it and his stupidity ---- for he wanted me to fix it ....told him to nuke it and start again

I use Avast -- install it every where

Kaspersky for the win. I LOVE this program. It picked up things that WEREN'T false positives that McAfee didn't know existed.

DarthBart: Is this where I get smug and say I don't have a virus problem because I have a Mac and a Linux box?

No, it's where we all point and laugh at the thought of a grown man who's never known the feeling of a woman's soft skin.

Love,

Subby