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I'm running WinXP SP2. And I have Norton Internet Security. Well, and Spysweeper, because Norton isn't enough.
But Norton is a horrible thing. And now ccapp.exe keeps crashing, which means I'm online unprotected. So I want to get something new.
Which means I have two problems. One is what to get. What's a good antivirus/firewall for XP (it can be separate products, if they play nicely together) that's not overly expensive, and that won't make my system freeze up, and that won't give me a hard time opening ports if I need to?
The other one is rooting Norton out of my system. As I understand it, it's like a weed. It's extraordinarily difficult to pull all of it out. Has anyone here had experience with this?
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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At my last job, I had access to all the big name AV products...the one that worked the best is Computer Associates eTrust (I think they just call it CA AntiVirus now). Trial software. There's an Internet Security bundle, but I never used those features. It's low overhead and doesn't require a whole bunch of baby-sitting. It's also the only thing that rooted out the current crop of spyware/trojans that recently infected my PC.
Posts: 5422 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Hmm... it didn't get great reviews here. So far, I'm leaning towards Kaspersky. The reviews look good, and it apparently doesn't slow you down when it's scanning, which is a big plus. Thanks for the suggestion, though. I don't want to make any quick decisions.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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No worries. AVG is supposed to be good, but it never worked right on my system, and never did successfully clean these particular viruses once it seemed to be working. Trend Micro's offering is well-rated there, and I liked it but the interface was an annoyance.
Posts: 5422 | Registered: Dec 2001
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We use CA (anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall) because it's provided by our ISP. I have to actually turn off the firewall for some Web sites (ones that I trust) to work properly. For example, when I went to HP.com to download drivers for my printer after we had to reformat the hard drive, I couldn't access the correct page with the firewall turned on. There are other times that happened - that's just the one I can remember at the moment.
So for me, we use it because it's free, but it can be a hassle sometimes.
Posts: 2034 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I have AVG. It works fine, but it's never found any viruses. That either means that I have none, or it doesn't find them. Unfortunately, I can't tell which. For what it's worth, Norton never found any either while I had it. All that did was slow my computer down.
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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I use Avast Antivirus (which is free) and the built-in Windows firewall. It seems to work fine for me. I don't remember uninstalling Norton being very difficult—there's a lot to uninstall, but I don't remember it being stubborn or anything. But I got rid of it a few years ago, so maybe I've forgotten.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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I use a hardware firewall/router, Firefox+GMail+AdBlock, regular backups to my Linux box, and common sense. Also, I only let a few sites set cookies.
If you do that, background antivirus scanning isn't necessary. I've done this for a few years with multiple windows machines on my LAN, and I've never noticed any traffic anomalies that indicate one of my machines is infected. (And, obviously, I've not noticed any direct connections, either.) I also occasionally run manual AV/Spyware scans, but usually only when I'm getting close to re-installing Windows.
Posts: 145 | Registered: Apr 2007
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quote:Originally posted by Shigosei: I have AVG. It works fine, but it's never found any viruses. That either means that I have none, or it doesn't find them. Unfortunately, I can't tell which. For what it's worth, Norton never found any either while I had it. All that did was slow my computer down.
You can run a web based scan (like Trend Micro's Housecall) to ensure there isn't anything that's being missed.
Posts: 5422 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I have nothing valuable to add, only that when I saw the thread title, I thought, "Huh. I kinda like the Norton anthologies..."
Posts: 100 | Registered: Jun 2006
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I used to use Trend Micro and that worked well and wasn't intrusive or anything. Recently, I haven't been using any anti-virus software. If you keep up with Windows updates then your chances of arbitrarily getting a worm are rather low anyways.
Posts: 1327 | Registered: Aug 2007
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