anti virus that doesn't kill?

[moonbutter2]

WHat anti virus software that works good and does not kill your computer speed?

[Tango_Romeo]

.....doesn't exist! It is not possible to have an efficient AV program that does not use lots of RAM. It's not slowing your processor; it's just hogging your RAM.

McAfee is by far the best of the bunch, and can slow you down. However, you can control how much McAfee slows your system through settings. For example, turn-off Scan Outgoing Email. Turning that feature off will in itself cut down RAM usage.
You can observe which program is doing what in the Processes tab of Task Manager. :ernae:
If you don't use a very good AV suite, you had better be very careful of where you go on the net.....and be afraid, very afraid. Every month or so we have a SOH member that gets infected because of lack of sufficient protection. :isadizzy:

[bearcat241]

You should try the latest Zone Alarm Internet Suite with AV/ASW. Even with its heavy punch its got a light footprint on resources.

But as with any security program its always best for max game speeds to disable your on-demand scanner when running your sims and games. This will prevent slowdowns as the scanner attempts to check every file that loads during play. I do this with ZA and it works fine. I also have 2 gigs of RAM, so the memory hit is hardly noticeable.

[Allen]

Keep any AV that you have!

I'd say start start by killing any unneeded programs. Start with your task bar by the clock and any programs that came installed when your PC was new. On My XP when it was new there was support program that ran by the manufacturer. You know do more with HP,Gateway.ext AOL crap or whatever interner BS that came running on it.

That should help cut the crap down and keep speed up.

[R C CAWTE]

AVG 8.0 .It runs well,stops most of the nasties,and is FREE.

Oh,and do what the others said .Switch it off when your not on the net.

[PHo17]

WHat anti virus software that works good and does not kill your computer speed?

For normal office programs any one of them. For flight sims (and some other games) none.

My computer is from the year 2005. CFS2 runs rather well even with anti virus program. FS2004 tangles even without it.

Pekka

[Buddha13]

Hi all,
I like and have used both PC Tools Internet Security 2009 and Trends Internet security packages.Both seem to have a light touch but work well.
These are both full security packages.Using the PC Tools one at the moment and love it.
For free use PC Tools have free A/V program,Firewall and a program called Threatfire that uses a heuristic approach.If you run all three it still uses only a small footprint.
AV
http://www.pctools.com/free-antivirus/
Firewall
http://www.pctools.com/firewall/
Threatfire
http://www.threatfire.com/
I also suggest for spyware this program
http://www.superantispyware.com/

Buddha13

[CH_OldZeke]

Free, I'd say Avast. I've ran Avast for over 2 years now with no probs. Small updates that are quick even on dialup and seems to have a small footprint. Course being free is kinda nice as well

Payware I've heard that NOD32 is a good one.

[GearyMcS]

ESET's Nod32 was designed with gamers in mind. Been using it about a year now and very satisfied with it.

[SPman]

Been using Antivir for the last 5 yrs - its free and good!
Zonealarm is the best of the free firewalls and I also use Threatfire and Spybot

[Tango_Romeo]

.....by a trojan-dropper a couple of days ago, and he thought he was protected. Just be careful which program you trust....check it out thoroughly. If it doesn't offer at least weekly updates, it ain't gonna do the job.

[egypt23spitfire]

..AS BC said get as much RAM as you can fit
...my first line of defense is a proggy called MAILWASHER which just shows me the headers on the ISP and i can decide which i want to read OR destroy(before they even come anywhere near my machine.
... i use PEGASUS mail (which also has a selectable in case there is a prob with MAILWASHER.

..........NEXT-been using AVAST for bout 4 yrs free sign up every 13 or so months upgrades upto twice a day and have never had a prob but have had some false positives which are usually fixed in the next engine upgrade helpfull friendly and always return my queries also a very helpful forum
.and i'm a heavy 24/7/365 user
........for trojans from websites i use SPYBOT-sd resident and MALWAREBYTES/ANTI-MALWARE scanner both free
.........aint been hit in 4 years

.........last BAD hit i got i was using AVG

..........oh yeah and of cause ZONE ALARM PRO (BOUGHT))
..........can never sing ENUFF higher praises for ZP

[Dirtman]

G'day All;

After hearing about Obi's trouble, plus all the others who have had problems recently; I've decided to retest all the security products from the major manufacturers.

I haven't conducted a head to head comparison for almost 3 years, this was last done in the pre-Vista time before all the upgrades.

I will be testing:

AVAST (free) (testing complete)
Norton (payware) (testing now)
McAfee (payware)
Kasperski (payware)
AVG Free 8.0 (free)


This testing has 3 objectives:

1) How many files are checked during each scan?
- the larger the number of files checked (by the program) indicated the thoroughness of the scan. This indicates the depth of your protection.
Many offer different levels of scanning; I will be using - deep or complete scan to test the maximum number of files per scan.

2) How often does the program update?
- a program that updates daily affords the user the latest threat protection. Once per week updates: are not acceptable!

3) How long does a scan take?
- this just tests the efficiently of the program for comparison purposes.


When complete I will post the results here for you all to see.

----------------------------------------

In answer to the original question posted by moonbutter2:

I'm using my old computer to do this testing. It's a P3 866MHz with 256MB RAM. This was a useful & viable unit until I upgraded from AVG Free7.5 to 8.0 at which time I noticed a significant decrease in speed & thus usefulness on the internet.

But on the upside; the AVG Free 8.0 upgrade combined some functions (added their previously "stand alone" AVG Free Antispyware) & also added an active Resident Shield plus browser protection.

In this day & age I accept this as the "cost of surfing the net - safely".
In my opinion: a P3 is no longer able to cope (with all the new threats that need to be addressed) efficiently. It will still operate; but will be very slow.

My new computer is an old 1st generation P4 (3GHz Intel CPU - Prescott series [478 socket] 2GB RAM ( PC3200 / 400MHz )
With all the security turned on (AVG 8.0, Resident Shield plus Spybot "Tea Timer") this unit still operates very fast; even with multiple programs running.


Note: All Windows o/s operate in the RAM. The more RAM you have, the better & faster it will run.
I use WinXP Pro SP3. Thru observations on the new machine; I've found that I'm using 550MB to 800MB of RAM at any given time.
So for you guys out there with 512 RAMs ..... it's time to get more!!

WinXP specifies a minimum 128MB of RAM but runs properly with 1-2GB.
Win Vista Home Premium spec's a min. of 1GB RAM but seems to run sluggishly.
I've upgraded a couple of Vista units to 2GBs (from 1GB) & seen a huge increase in speed.


That's it for now, I'll post the test results soon.

.
.

[Crusader]

ESET's Nod32 was designed with gamers in mind. Been using it about a year now and very satisfied with it.

I totally agree . I also have been using ESET's Nod32 for over a year running VISTA 64bit . I have CFS3 , FS9 and FSX installed without any problems . I have it on two desktops and one laptop without any problems .

Rich

[Tango_Romeo]

....hard, and he uses the following:

...my first line of defense is a proggy called MAILWASHER which just shows me the headers on the ISP and i can decide which i want to read OR destroy(before they even come anywhere near my machine.
... i use PEGASUS mail (which also has a selectable in case there is a prob with MAILWASHER.

..........NEXT-been using AVAST for bout 4 yrs free sign up every 13 or so months upgrades upto twice a day and have never had a prob but have had some false positives which are usually fixed in the next engine upgrade helpfull friendly and always return my queries also a very helpful forum
.and i'm a heavy 24/7/365 user
........for trojans from websites i use SPYBOT-sd resident and MALWAREBYTES/ANTI-MALWARE scanner both free
.........aint been hit in 4 years

.........last BAD hit i got i was using AVG

..........oh yeah and of cause ZONE ALARM PRO (BOUGHT))
..........can never sing ENUFF higher praises for ZP

Just goes to show you that any, and I mean any system can be breached.
There's a measure for every counter-measure. LOL. :isadizzy:

[Tango_Romeo]

Scan and defrag speed on FAT32 (the usual standard format) file formatted hard-drives is twice as long as on hard-drives that have been converted to the newer file format. Conversion is fairly simple and the directions are included in the HELP section of Windows XP. This might be a help to folks looking for some time savings on scans and defrags.