antivirus/Internet protection love 'em or hate 'em

[britfrog 180]

Having installed my IOM scenery i thought i would take a flight from the IOM to Guernsey in the aerosoft airbus to celebrate. So downloaded a flight plan went through all the preflight checks and was about to pull back from the stand when i noticed the central upper and lower eicas were not working, strange!

no matter what I tried they would not work so presumed it was a faulty a/c  so fired up another airline with the same result. so nothing for it but close down a restart FSX and go through the whole process again, sadly with the same result. So off to the aerosoft forums where a few others had the same problem and the general opinion was a re-installation was required.

However i started to look at nortons history and found that it had quarantined a file a few days before so i told it to reinstall it and what do you know my airbus worked again.

Now my airbus had been installed for over a month , and norton carries out a daily check why did it take it upon itself to wait a month before hamstringing my airbus?

So out of curiosity i went back to the norton history and delved deeper and found that it had deleted several microsoft updates that had been on the p.c. for over a year!!

all without so much as a by your leave

normally i would bin norton but when again i look at its history i see that it has prevented litterally hundreds of attempts per day to get into my p.c from whom knows where. Now i have no secret info or credit card details in my p.c. but it scares me what might happen if they did succeed as i really would like to avoid a reinstallation of windows and all 700gb's of FSX, yes it would be easy to unplug the network cable but quite a few progs in fsx require to be online to work or get authorisation to work, so i guess for the time being I will have to put up with the vagaries of Norton until something better comes along.

[MyPC8MyBrain 273]

just a thought, if you didn’t see the log

would you still be convinced it’s doing a good job?

is it possible that they exaggerate to make themselves appear needed?

i haven’t run any AV on my PC in years now; it take me less time to restore my system then to be bogged down by AV and FW

I’m not bragging; i haven’t yet been compromised with the way i do things

beside; they don’t know either it was an attempt to attack you; they assume!

then translate this to a log format; but it doesn’t mean someone was trying to hack you! did you even see a friendly log message?

ooh this was an error packet sorry, or something like that, no you never did; it’s always someone trying to brake in; isn’t it?

there are many lost packets that will knock on your door for no reason; it doesn’t mean you being compromised

it is financially beneficial for them to make you think though

I know ill get fire for this, the days of Viruses and Trojans are over

Unless its someone from your own house hold who’s spying on you

No virus or worm will cross your ISP gateways; the ISP cannot afford it!

and it’s been like this for many years now,

The AV companied are still riding this wave as long as they can

You should have binned Norton years ago

They are no longer the pinnacle of technology; just the first we known

NOD32 is the only way to go (imo) these days for AV protection if you still insist

15$ buys a year subscription, software is free and so are update during your subscription

[allardjd 1,853]

A local computer shop owner, who seems to know his onions, swears that the payware AV, all of it, exaggerates threats and tries to make it seem as if they are saving you daily.  He says he relies almost exclusively on the free Microsoft Security Essentials.  He believes Microsoft understands it's in their best interest for you to have a good experience with Windows and theirs is effective but avoids trying to scare you about viruses, etc.  I use MSE and a couple of other freeware packages, having weaned myself of MacAfee's payware some years ago.  I've not had a problem - knock on wood.

 

John

[needles 1,013]

I have only ever used the freeware tools, without problems.

Another case methinks of the scaremongers reaching their goal, and that is to part you from your hard earned £$ etc etc.

[Quickmarch 488]

I absolutely refuse to have McAfee or Norton anywhere in the system. Bad experiences and real slow staretups are now a thing of the past. I have been using NOD32 (by Eset) since the late 90's and I am very happy with it. Maybe once or twice a year it traps something, mostly embedded in websites, warns me with a solid red screen, then gives me the option to quarantine, accept, or delete. I have the corporate version and it is installed on all computers associated with the boat.

[MyPC8MyBrain 273]

A local computer shop owner, who seems to know his onions, swears that the payware AV, all of it, exaggerates threats and tries to make it seem as if they are saving you daily.

i have to agree with your college

it is very easy to prove; anyone can do it

provided you have two computers, ping from one to the other with your FW on

i guarantee you will get a some horror message saying someone is trying to hack you pc

open a browser window, and put your other computer address; hit go then check your other PC AV logs

i assure you won’t see a message saying it was a friendly mistake

[mutley 4,497]

Happy with my subscription to ESET NOD32, updates it's signature 2 or 3 times a day.

[MyPC8MyBrain 273]

if you really feel like you need one

then no doubt ESET NOD32 is the way to go

no bs product and a fair price imo

[mutley 4,497]

I get a lot of unsolicited email being a webmaster as well everything else and NOD32 has quarantined many an email with a virus. Not that I open any attachment from an unknown source but I am happy to have that protection.

 

MS Essentials is fantastic free service and I would recommend it to anyone who doesn't trust the motives of payware vendors. 

[J G 927]

I use MS Essentials for all my home PCs and it is free and just great.  I guess it has to be as it has MS name on it.

 

At work we use Mcafee through a corporate licence so I have no choice but to use it.  It seems to do the job well enough.

 

As for Norton, Well I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. everyone who I know has had issues with it and the way it spreads it tendrils throughout the machine it is on. My advice is to avoid.

[Captain Coffee 2,030]

I have been using the free AVAST antivirus that came with my last two machines...works fine. I use the stock MS Firewall...no problems. I try not to clik on ad links, porn links (that one is a bit harder to no clik...but so far so good).

My very first computer ever had NORTON installed, and it was essentially a system hogging free VIRUS included with the machine. After putting up with it for 1/2 a year as an ignoramus newbie first time computer owner, until I kept reading about how is was essentially an Owner Loaded Virus for you system...I finally replaced it with some freeware back then...forget what  it was and my system ran like a charm ever since...Never touched Norton shit again.

[MyPC8MyBrain 273]

Norton used to be a very good product back in the late 80's early to mid-90's

some executive must had convinced them the more they bundle the more customers they will get

and since then they became bloatware software; that just bogged down your machine until it was pointless to work

[Bruce (a.k.a. brian747) 142]

Agreed, Chris! When the very first IBM PC came out (I bought one, which dates me a bit!), Norton Utilities was a godsend. Since then Norton [anything] has increasingly become the worst kind of bloatware.

I have many home and even corporate clients who rely on MSE. But personally, I prefer a firewall I can configure and control.

Just saying....

Cheers,

Bruce

a.k.a. brian747

[dogtrack 346]

Tried them all over the years. Only one that failed to give me yet another headache has been MSE. That said, common sense is the best AV in my book.

[brett 2,315]

I had a particular virus that Security Essentials and Malwarebytes couldn't get rid of all of, although they did find some, but so far Avast was the only one that is keeping things on the straight and level, it was the only one that blocked a dllhost virus that was a real pain in the arse too. Thank you Avast.

 

??? This virus was linking up through a dllhost.exe in my Windows/SysWOW64 folder and has the same date as another dllhost.exe in my Windows/System32 folder. Am I supposed to have two of those executable files in separate folders or is the one in my SysWOW64 folder a virus clone? Anyone know and can help would be appreciated.

 

 

[britfrog 180]

I had a particular virus that Security Essentials and Malwarebytes couldn't get rid of all of, although they did find some, but so far Avast was the only one that is keeping things on the straight and level, it was the only one that blocked a dllhost virus that was a real pain in the arse too. Thank you Avast.

 

??? This virus was linking up through a dllhost.exe in my Windows/SysWOW64 folder and has the same date as another dllhost.exe in my Windows/System32 folder. Am I supposed to have two of those executable files in separate folders or is the one in my SysWOW64 folder a virus clone? Anyone know and can help would be appreciated.

 

I have dllhost.exe dated 14/07/2009 of 7kbs

and dllhst3g.exe of the same date and size if that helps

 

however using process explorer neither is active or being used

 

this may help you decide

 

http://www.file.net/process/dllhost.exe.html

[Kasper 14]

I have to keep my systems secure as a working condition (i actually will loose the job if I don't use a firewall, AV and encryption).

The best AV for the last couple of years have been Kaspersky and ESET. Both stop above 95% in testing. AVAST has the best free product. The payware version is just a little less secure than Kaspersky and ESET.

Norton and McAfee have lost it years ago. Installing those products give you about a 50% change of stopping anything - and they are resource hogs.