I use AntiVir, which is free.. has worked well for me for the last couple of years.. free updates… does anyone know any problems or have personal opinions of this program?
I have lots of opinions ;o)
I had always heard that NOD32 ($$) and Kaspersky ($$) were the best. We use NOD32 at work, so I’m familiar with it.
But for home, when possible, I like to try things out before I spend my $$ on them. I tried Kaspersky with no problems, had read a few reviews of Antivir and decided to try it as well.
Once downloaded and installed it found 3 virii that had not been detected previously.
That speaks for itself.
You’d better hope they weren’t FPs, ‘cos Kaspersky doen’t leave much to be found!!
Actually, I use Kaspersky as my main AV (’cos I don’t mind paying!) and I have AntiVir as a really excellent free back-up. At times I have used AntiVir as my resident AV and I consider it to be about the best of the free AVs - in terms its detection rate at least.
Any minor quibbles usually relate to things like the updater and interface etc. But for me these are non-issues when compared to anti-malware ability. AntiVir is actually better at finding things than several of the paid for AV’s! It does have more of a problem with false positives, though in practice this only occurs very infrequently. Personally I would rather risk a FP than a false negative!!
hello there,my opinion-
I have used AVPE for a while now and i like it,easy to use regular updates,good detection rate so far up to now?,good forums for help on their own avpe site and here and other sites.
Only recently though in the last week AVPE missed (1) TROJANS and (1) VIRUS and these were giving me a BIG problem on my PC XP!
It was only because i ran an independant scanner with A2 and ewido that detection was found,so i think it is good to have a backup with another scanner.
regards
dragon
I agree with the above about uusing A2 or Ewido alonside AntiVir. AVs are quite often not as good at finding trojans as they are viruses and worms etc. Whereas A2 and Ewido are specialist trojan hunters, and when you combine either of them with AntiVir you have a much wider coverage of malware.
hello all and welcome to the AVPE Forum,
I use AVPE and TrojanHunter together. Btw, trojans are not viruses. No one application will protect you at 100%. Anyone seeking that is on a futile quest.
Besides using my AV and AT on a daily basis, about once a week I run a free online AV scan. As in medicine, it can help to get a second opinion.
Check out #10 at this link for reputeable free online AV scanners: /postt75440.html
Best regards
I’ll take false positives all day compared to the alternative. I’m certainly not bashing Kaspersky, and I understand no AV is perfect. I especially like the fact that AntiVir PE has automatic updates - not all AV have that feature.
hi all
if i might suggest something…
u can use the free dos based scanner from f-prot as a backup to antivir to check files for false positives.
to make it easy to use, get this file from http://www.uzipaz.com/eng/addfprot_reg.txt
and rename the file to *.reg and double click to add to registry.
whenever u want to check any suspicios file, right click the folder it is in and secect “scan with f-prot”
i do this because i love antivir but it gives me false positives sometimes.
regards
satish
But you have to trust F-Prot to get it right. A much better idea is to upload the suspiceous file to Jotti’s multiple engine scan here:- http://virusscan.jotti.dhs.org/.
Or simply to Kaspersky here:- http://www.kaspersky.com/remoteviruschk.html
The above will scan single files for you. In practice the number of FPs from AntiVir is not great, but it can happen, particularly after a new sig file download; that is why I like to keep an eye on the official AntiVir Forum here:- http://www.free-av.de/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi
That saved my bacon over the recent ‘TR/OLE.hiddenEXE’ false positive - a lot of people went ahead and deleted the file unfortunately!
hi
ur right about having to trust f-prot and the fact that it has to be able to detect the virus correctly. but in my experience, its almost never gives me a false positive, only 2 times in the last 4 years that i have been using it. and it detects almost everything just like kaspersky.
but my logic in doing so is that i dont have to crank up my dial up connection everytime i want to confirm something by submitting it online. instead, i can confirm it with great confidence offline itself using f-prot.
also, i have sent atleast 15 or so false positive reports to antivir in last 2 or 3 months. thats quite a lot. but then i am bound to get more false positivs because i download a lot of different software, much more than an average home user.
but still let me say, i love antivir and the fact that if i send them a sample for analysis, i get a reply within 24 hours. i simply love these guys.
regards
satish
You have the Win32 Heuristic enabled in AVPE, don’t you?
Heuristics always detect more FPs simply because heuristic scans detect maybe-malware files. It is the nature of heuristic scanners to work that way. Disable the heuristic scans if you do not want false positives.
f-prot may be excellent but AVPE is a superior application too.
Still it’s a bad idea to run more than one AV at a time. With AVs more is definitely less. Two or three running simultaneously will be like having no AV protections at all. Use one and only one.
Best regards and Merry Christmas
Fair product. Lousy method to obtain and maintain. Company behind the product has always been slow to make any modifications to the free product. Those with older machines or using dial up may want to think about another product, as maintaining AntiVir/PE can be a pain in the posterior under those conditions. Do not expect any replies to your questions from company representatives. While the forums have good people, remember they have no authority in regards to the product.
Remember there are other FREE virus protection programs. Check some of the security forums to see which ones are liked by other people. Always practice safe computing, as no protection program is 100% sure.
Happy Holidays to all.
Thanks
wildman
~ Your opinion is biased by your attitude. Actually, the product is better than that.
~ It is provided as a standard download. It’s not even zipped. Maintenance is easy.
~ Modifications are provided on a timely basis, usually at least twice per month.
~ Having an older machine depends on the expertise of the person using it.
Everything is slow on dialup. Get hellogh-Speed DSL or Cable and stop waiting around.
~ They will respond if you pay for the product you use, and if you ask politely.
~ You do not need to be a company representative of a product in order to provide assistance with it. Hundreds of thousands of forums exist like this all over the Internet.
Remember too that all of the Staff at CastleCops give freely of their time and talents to help you with your problems. You are saving hundreds of dollars in installation and cleaning fees.
Best regards
HI
I wont be particlarly critical on AntiVir and the fact that their updates are big. You can always visit a cyber cafe to dowload updates if downloading at home is problematic, that way it will be cheaper as well.
Infact, i have a dial-up connection at home and it takes me around 5-7 min to download. I would prefer incremental updates too, but let us be fair, you dont look a gift horse in the mouth.
As far as FREE antiviruses are concerned, in my experience AntiVir is as good as the others if not better.
Try Avast or AVG if you like, but i shifted to AntiVir after Avast let a virus through inspite of detecting it in the real time scan.
And no Prince, AntiVir does give a few FP’s even with no heuristics. And dont worry, I use F-Prot for DOS as a backup scanner, its only an on-demand scanner, no real time scanning happens, so no chance of conflicts. Atleast none in my case.
Regards and Merry Christmas to all
Satish
Well i think PRINCE has said it all!,well done PRINCE for giving an ACCURATE reply to wildman in what seems to be a slightly biased and seemingly incorrect statements-in MOST parts of his comments!,everyone entitled to their opinions here- as long as they are correct and not misleading.
I have been using AVPE for some time now and find it easy to use,regular updates daily and also full program updates too,simple to set up and use,the av is continually improved,the updates e.g VDF depending on how much is downloaded can take anything from 5-10 minutes and the full program update maybe 13 minutes in my own experience and with no fuss or complications ever,AVPE uses small resources about 4.7mb,compared to the other free avs AVG and AVAST use allot more 7.0mb or more and apart from using take a long time to scan your pc and are not always reliable having tried them in the past -maybe now they have improvements-hope so as its good to have diffent avprograms to maybe try out and compare-cannot add anymore to that except,hope you all had nice xmas and relaxing time off with family and friends.
dragonbreath
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