(no subject)

[darkoshi]

Personal AV notes.. ignore unless you're really interested...

Note: My employer requires that I have a commercial-grade (non-freeware) AV program and firewall (not just the XP firewall) installed on my system, if I want to be able to connect to the work network from my home computer.


RealSecure Desktop Protector (firewall)

- I can get this free from my work.
- seemed to run ok; I don't remember it slowing the system down in general.
- may have caused some problems occasionally during system shutdown.
- I don't like how it installed - there was no uninstall option in its Start Programs folder, and no entry in Add/Remove Programs. This may be only a problem with the version I got from work. To uninstall, I had to manually run agentremove.exe from the install folder. However the registry entries were not removed, and this caused subsequent errors to be logged in System Events, due to the driver file not being found - had to manually edit the registry to fix this, but there are still other leftover registry entries now, which I'm not sure if they are safe to delete, so I left them.

EZ Antivirus (from CA)

- I got this free from work for the last 2 years, but now would have to pay for it.
- it seemed to run ok; I don't remember it slowing the system down in general.
- it did not prevent a virus/trojan/etc from getting into my system one time; and even when I reported this on their website, they never responded back more than to say that the files appeared to be "suspicious".

Ad-Aware/Ad-Watch anti-adware anti-spyware

- I bought this in Aug 2004; since that was 2 and a half years ago I'm not sure if I am even still qualified for updates. But I think they also have a free version.
- I like that this shows pop-ups when programs try to change the registry, and asks whether or not to allow it. This was what made me notice the aforementioned virus/trojan that got on my system the one time (however, it wasn't able to prevent it - apparently the registry got updated even though I did not choose to allow it).
- I'm not sure if the definitions file got updated automatically every day - it seemed like it only did it when I manually opened the main program. This is something I'm not sure about - but it is my main concern with this software - what good is it, if I have to remember to do updates manually every day? Or was this only an issue on my old computer (I seem to remember installing the free version, because I had problems installing the paid version)?
- Earlier this year, this software was causing problems with shutdown - I had to uninstall and reinstall it (this was mentioned in their FAQ).


BitDefender Av Plus version 10 (includes Firewall)

- I installed the trial version of this after uninstalling the EZ AV. After installing this, I disabled Ad-Watch, and uninstalled the RealSecure firewall as mentioned above.
- I noticed my Firefox browser locking up more often than in the past, so decided to try different software.
- When I tried to uninstall, it locked up. So I rebooted and tried again - then got an error message, so wasn't able to continue. Had to download BitDefender_Uninstall_Tool.EXE from their website and run this for the uninstall to complete.


Panda Internet Security 2007 Platinum

- I installed the trial version of this after uninstalling BitDefender.

- I remembered that when I had the aforementioned virus/trojan problem, that the Panda ActiveX scanner was the only online tool I found which recognized a trojan in certain files (after I had already tracked down the suspicious files on my own).

- The Panda software seems flaky though...

- kept getting a "Conflict between Firewalls" message occasionally, asking me if I wanted to use the Panda firewall or the XP one (even though I had already told it to use Panda's instead of XP's)

- got a "Wifi intruder detected" message once showing Forestfen's computer's IP address, even though her machine does not have a wireless card. So I wasn't sure if this was a spurious warning, or whether there was actually some other machine trying to intrude with that IP address.

- a few times, it blocked things I was trying to run from connecting to the internet, and by the time I got a popup asking whether the connection should be allowed or not, the other programs had already failed, so I had to run them again.

- I started getting the warning that my protection level was low and that "the Communications Library (LSP)" should be reinstalled. I allowed it to reinstall and reboot, but then got the warning again. I allowed it to reinstall again, and then it did not show the message again.
I searched Panda's site for info on this message, and found nothing.
I searched the web for info on this problem, and found one page mentioning it, but could not access the linked-to page which had an explanation or solution.

- Panda sometimes gives warnings about inbound connection attempts, when it's really due to my own programs, which I would think should be "outbound"


Norton Internet Security Suite (15 day trial)

- I installed this after uninstalling Panda.
- The install itself went reasonably fast, but the LiveUpdate part took more than half an hour. It seemed to have locked up at one point, but apparently it was just very very slow with whatever it was doing (this was after it had already downloaded the updates).
- There appears to be no option for setting how often the LiveUpdates should occur.
- It puts an annoying green bar across all Internet Explorer windows with the message "Fraud Monitoring is On", and there appears to be no option for hiding it.
- the taskbar icon is shown with an annoying red exclamation point, simply because I choose to have my settings set so that I can review the Windows Automatic Updates before they are installed.
- It has slowed down my system a lot. Occasionally, things will slow down as if something else is taking all the CPU, for no apparent reason. If it is doing updates when this happens, I am given no indication of it.
- Doing a full system scan took a long time to complete - probably between 1 and 2 hours (I haven't done this lately with any of the other tools, so I can't compare).
- I haven't gotten any error messages or confusing warnings, and it appears to be running ok, other than the slowdown of my system. However there has been so much slowdown, that I am not willing to keep this software installed.
- Uninstalled Norton... no apparent problems with the uninstall. There are still some leftover entries in the registry, but at least they aren't causing any errors in the Event log.

ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite 6.5 15 day Trial
- Installed this after uninstalling Norton.
- The install was relatively fast and easy; no problems. The update went fine.
- Seems to be working ok so far.