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  1. Free Anti-Virus Gotchas

    Today most of the time was consumed fixing my favorite buddy's laptop with Win7.
    The problem goes like this...

    Purchased & Authentic Antivirus Brand-N started poping up renewal notices very frequently. The licence renewal from authentic online store was approximately $100. So he ignored renewal pop-ups. After couple of days his some files from personal folder gone missing. I would consider as an accidental delete by user, as my buddy is technically so dumb-ssa (He can not do even simple copy-n-paste, But he know what site to visit, and what to watch). I would like to cite paid & purchased Brand-N performed OK during a year - paid period of subscription.

    Finally he was fed up with the problems, and got only me to fix it. We successfully un-installed Brand-N anti-virus and removed left-over registry traces. After searching on internet for free and good anti-virus, We have installed Brand-A with cloud option enabled in hope of getting better protection. Once we installed Brand-A, after two succecssful (normal) boot, booting time drastically increased to several minutes and opening Internet Explorer or other applications were taking so long upto 30 minutes. So, We had to un-install it completely and removed left-over traces as well.

    Then, we installed (Free & recommended as good) Brand-C with cloud option automatically set during installtion, no switch for user to disable it. The end result was PC could not boot all in a normal mode. We booted in safe mode, un-installed Brand-C completely.

    Finally we just settled with Microsoft Security Essentials and MBSA and tweaked some setting that can offer reasonably good protection. Laptop started booting in less than 10 sec, and all other softwares strted working a way better than ever before, I mean a little bit faster.

    At end of everything, my buddy asked me "Am I safe without any anti-virus?"
    I laughed and replied "you are even not safe with anti-virus as well!" (that's what he noticed as well while trying different brands.)

    If you have any suggestions for Free and relatively good Anti-Virus Software or a complain, you are welcomed.
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  2. Member turk690's Avatar
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    Would be interesting to know exactly what brand N is.
    For the nth time, with the possible exception of certain Intel processors, I don't have/ever owned anything whose name starts with "i".
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  3. Mod Neophyte Super Moderator redwudz's Avatar
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    I now use the freeware version of Avast. It has some adware, but I ignore that and you can bypass most during install.

    Some free anti-malware programs ding you to continually update. (For a price.) The price is too high for me.

    Maybe just me, but I run away from any 'Cloud' reference. I don't want to put any of my info on some unknown storage site.

    MS has some 'solutions'. I'm thinking of Windows Defender and Windows Firewall. In quite a few years, I have never had W Defender or W Firewall stop a single malware problem. Maybe they have, but I doubt it.

    Anyway, I use Avast freeware version. Though it has some adware stuff during install, you should be able to bypass that with a 'custom' install.

    I also run 'Malware Bytes' on occasion, but I haven't tried it for a full time anti-malware program.
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  4. Anyway, I use Avast freeware version. Though it has some adware stuff during install, you should be able to bypass that with a 'custom' install.
    Thanks for suggestion.

    Next time we will try your suggestion (only if he brings some free beers).
    Anyway he has nothing so called privacy - he is kinda guy can share anything with any one. So I am least worried.
    Will try avast with custom install as suggested in his next visit (with some other minor settings problems).
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  5. Member hech54's Avatar
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    Avast for me as well. Been using it for YEARS with no problems.
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  6. just sent a detailed email to install avast and malware-bytes. let's see how he goes.
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  7. Avast for me also. I use Malwarebytes Anti-malware free edition as a regular additional scanner.
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  8. Member hech54's Avatar
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    Avast
    MalWareBytes
    SuperAntiSpyware
    SpyWareBlaster
    CCleaner

    Done.
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  9. Avast works well and is customizable enough that I could get it to run decently on a PIII-1000. I agree that the cloud feature in it is a huge waste of time (seems to slow everything down) and internet bandwidth (cloud is a 2-way road and is constantly active). MSE should be Ok for Gran'Ma; I seriously doubt it has the balls to survive an encounter with a warez or pr0n site and even some of those encounter sites make me leery.

    Still, I prefer Kaspersky's internet security suite (not convinced of the usefulness of the higher packages). It's pretty easy to get for $20 and I got it for $10 once; just keep a eye on sales flyers. I usually try to keep one box in reserve, but at $10 I got three so I'm set for another year and a half. All I have to do is enter the new code every year. I'll get one more if I see it on sale for less than $20.
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  10. Originally Posted by enim View Post
    At end of everything, my buddy asked me "Am I safe without any anti-virus?"
    I laughed and replied "you are even not safe with anti-virus as well!"
    Ironically, I laughed when I read that, because it sums up one of my reasons for not running anti-virus software.
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  11. Banned
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    I used to use and recommend AVG, but some years ago they made it so incredibly difficult to get the free version that I gave up and went with Avast. There are some things I preferred about AVG, but Avast is OK. I haven't checked in a while but I want to be clear so no one misunderstands. I'm not saying that AVG didn't have a free version, I'm saying that originally it used to be easy to find and install but eventually they made it where you had to click through a bunch of different windows before you could find it and it was an operation that seemed to be deliberately designed to make new users give up and just buy it as it was easy to find the paid one.

    Going with Microsoft Security Essentials is actually not really a crazy idea any more. It's better than nothing for sure now and you could argue the point that it might actually be enough for many users. I'd argue that since Win 7 came out the default Windows Firewall is good enough for almost everybody and there's little point now in replacing it with one of the many alternatives. MSE has just about reached that level too.

    All anti-virus give some false positives, so users have to be aware of that. If I had to pay for something, I might go with Kaspersky just because they are on the forefront of research in the field, but even they have some false positives too.
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    AVG Free Edition is still available and works pretty well. I use it for my machines that are not for primarily internet use.
    My preferred anti-virus is Bitdefender (which I use the paid version, but there is a free version). I used to use Avast which
    I think is still pretty good but I have noticed that it did give me some false positives for trojans. That said I would still
    consider that than no protection at all.
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  13. Guest34343
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    I had no problem finding and installing the free version of AVG 2014, and it works just fine.
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    I stopped using free anti-virus software years ago, exactly because of the (too many) false positives.

    Then I gave a brief try to NOD32, which didn't take too long to be fooled by a well-crafted worm&&rootkit

    IMNSHO, all modern computers should have AT LEAST 64GB of RAM and AT LEAST 12 cores.

    4 cores + 8 GB of RAM for the operating system itself, 4 cores +8GB of RAM for the bloated anti-virus && firewalls,
    the remainder for the normal applications.
    That's the actual price of inefficient coding, granted.
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  15. Avast here also. Some popups in lower right hand corner of screen asking me to up grade for this or that. Funny thing though, never finds ANY problems when doing scans. I have been using this for 5 plus years on same laptop. Should I count my blessings?
    Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence -Carl Sagan
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  16. Member n8tvm's Avatar
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    I just use the paid version of MalwareBytes and Windows Defender on Windows 8.1. That with a little smart habits seems to work just fine.
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  17. Will not touch Avast again. At least three times now it has rendered different customer's PCs totally unusable. This is with a relatively low count of installed users. I will recommend against installing it, and refuse to do so myself.

    Free AVG has always been easy to find and install, I do not understand issues. Used this for many, many years, on hundreds of PCs, it does not cause problems and provides reasonably good protection.

    MalwareBytes is the best removal tool on the planet. The paid version has been a bit problematic, I do not recommend it.

    Norton is a primary candidate for immediate removal if there is any problem, of any kind, on the PC. Another program I will refuse to install.

    CCleaner is not an anti-virus program, but is an essential clean-up tool after an infection.

    MSE is better than nothing, it also has a minimal footprint. Good for old or weak PCs.

    The Cloud crap is marketing BS. Avoid it like the plague.
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  18. Guest34343
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    Originally Posted by Nelson37 View Post
    MalwareBytes is the best removal tool on the planet. The paid version has been a bit problematic, I do not recommend it.
    Fully agreed on AVG. May I ask what you find problematic about MBAM paid? Thank you.
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  19. Thanks everyone for suggestions.
    Here comes his email reply....
    ... ... ...
    ... ... ...
    i managed to install avast and malwarebyte. malwarebyte found three and avast is warning "this site trying to donload some.exe" when I watch videos and removes it. everything is back to normal.
    ... ... ...
    ... ... ...
    seems he is happy with Avast & Malwarebytes.

    I have also suggested to install CCleaner per return reply.
    Tks!
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  20. As El Heggunte says it's getting to the point that you need a dual core CPU just to be able to still use your PC after installing an AV. There are some exceptions that run just fine even on old single core CPU's.

    Of the free AV's I've dealt with MSE is the least troublesome, the others would affect the performance enough to make me want to throw the PC out. One of Kaspersky's feature is the ability to surrender resources to programs that need them making it more bearable on low end machines, I'm running it on an 12 year old AthlonXP 1800 (I had to use Avast on the PIII because MSE won't install on WinFLP).

    Avast can't do that, but you can select the features to install and pare it down to something less demanding. Also, they make it easy to renew the subscription; I don't want to get calls from people that can't figure how to deal with that. I used to install AVG until they changed the way they handled the free AV; that was over ten years ago.

    AVG free can easily be found just googling for it there are many sites linking to it, the problem is finding a safe one. Here's a link on Betanews for those that really want AVG's free AV and not worry. In fact pretty much all AV's can be found there.
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  21. The thing I learned while fixing my friend's Core i7 laptop is...
    Alien websites from the running ads also get connected while user visit and cause more harm.
    For example:-
    Many website when any user visit Connecting to fonts.googleapis.com... or some other alien links appears as under.

    At the time of writing this I am not sure that how many browsers are capable of displaying such alien links as above, but, some of this alien site keep trying to download some executables into user's PC in background for some malicious interest.

    Is there any Fool's full-proof way to block such alien websites from connecting?
    I mean by tweaking some settings, tweaking Anti-Virus or Malware Protection Software settings.
    Last edited by enim; 11th Jun 2014 at 14:46.
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    ^ @enim: assuming I didn't misunderstand you ,

    one can use a custom hosts file, or AdBlockPlus, or Opera's built-in content blocker:
    Image Attached Thumbnails Click image for larger version

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    Last edited by El Heggunte; 11th Jun 2014 at 15:56. Reason: : - /
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  23. Originally posted by El Heggunte

    ^ @enim: assuming I didn't misunderstand you ,

    one can use a custom hosts file, or AdBlockPlus, or Opera's built-in content blocker:
    Thanks for pointing out Opera's content blocker.

    ^ @enim: assuming I didn't misunderstand you ,
    Editing Opera's content blocker or a host file which is tedious as it requires users endless efforts to key-in each url, where as user need to know each and every single url that he or she gonna block. I also do not think that every browser can offer a feature like Opera's content blocker.

    I was looking for some built-in browsers options or innocent browsers plugin capable of blocking (dispaying & logging) all aliens urls from connecting but only and only main visited website.

    In layman's words...
    My friend is a honest and trustworthy guy. But, his friend is a thief.
    So it is something like inviting my friend to a beer party by filtering out his friend completely.
    Last edited by enim; 11th Jun 2014 at 16:19.
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  24. I switched to the custom hosts file a couple weeks ago and couldn't be happier with the increased browser responsiveness.

    I used to have Adblock+; at first it felt like the "internet was a bit slower", but I thought it was the ISP's fault and I just got used to that's how it's supposed to be. Until the news started to go around last month about Adblock+, they are trying to fix the issues and admit it might be a while until they do.

    I tried the EFF's Privacy Badger, but that software is not ready for prime time. Then I came across MVPS' site on blocking unwanted connections; best resource on the subject.

    I integrated the sites from their HOSTS file with the ones from Spybot's immunize function. Right now it's blocking 28758 sites. That's a far cry from the >50000 in Adblock+ list, but on the bright side it protects all the browsers at once.

    If you only use Opera you could use their list for its content blocker. Copy the useful lines and paste them in notepad, use the replace function to delete the 0.0.0.0.

    One issue they mention is a HOSTS file larger than 135kB slows a machine down. The way around that is to disable the DNS Client service which is fine for single PC's or if you don't share resources between PC's on your LAN.

    It's also a good idea to make the file read only.
    Last edited by nic2k4; 11th Jun 2014 at 21:03.
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  25. I switched to the custom hosts file a couple weeks ago and couldn't be happier with the increased browser responsiveness.

    I used to have Adblock+; at first it felt like the "internet was a bit slower", but I thought it was the ISP's fault and I just got used to that's how it's supposed to be. Until the news started to go around last month about Adblock+, they are trying to fix the issues and admit it might be a while until they do.

    I tried the EFF's Privacy Badger, but that software is not ready for prime time. Then I came across MVPS' site on blocking unwanted connections; best resource on the subject.

    I integrated the sites from their HOSTS file with the ones from Spybot's immunize function. Right now it's blocking 28758 sites. That's a far cry from the >50000 in Adblock+ list, but on the bright side it protects all the browsers at once.

    If you only use Opera you could use their list for its content blocker. Copy the useful lines and paste them in notepad, use the replace function to delete the 0.0.0.0.

    One issue they mention is a HOSTS file larger than 135kB slows a machine down. The way around that is to disable the DNS Client service which is fine for single PC's or if you don't share resources between PC's on your LAN.
    My friend is a such a tech-idiot. Host file and Opera's content blocker is completely over his head that can block his head (or himself) completely. He always prefer IE for some reason. Some Adblocker & popup blocker IE plugins will do the job for him, as long as he can watch main video stream.

    According to his last email today IE11 on Windows7 started giving interruptions while watching videos, playing freezes every 2-to3 minutes.
    Probably it requires to re-install IE11, may be somewhere in next week or so, I guess.
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  26. I hear you, I know a few people like that. Yesterday was Patch Tuesday and there was a huge 40 MB patch to IE 11 and Adobe updated flash to v14.0.125 (Adobe has been synching their updates with MS for a few months). These updates might have broke something for some sites, we'll find out in a couple days.

    All I know is it took well over a half hour for the PC to reboot and I saw something about almost 20000 new entries in the registry while the boot process was still on the black logo part; first time I see that. The other odd thing, there was a lot of network activity over that half hour.
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  27. Not only he is complaining about IE11, as I know IE is not a good browser either but almost everyone in my group is complaining about IE11 has some persistent issues with Win7 and playing online videos. Most of the reviews in my group is IE11 is not as smooth as IE10. However for me it is next to impossible to verify it unless and until I get access to their computers.
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  28. Member
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    Avast free ! been using since childhood. This is one bad ass piece of a free anti-virus.
    MS defender and MS blah blah is a joke! Never trust it, It won't detect the simplest virus and itself is vulnerable to attacks.

    Originally Posted by Nelson37 View Post
    Will not touch Avast again. At least three times now it has rendered different customer's PCs totally unusable. This is with a relatively low count of installed users. I will recommend against installing it, and refuse to do so myself.

    ..
    ..
    @Nelson37 Normally avast has an option to put the infected file in quarantine. And sometimes in the "boot-time " scan mode it may happen that it may delete the file. I guess those customer's PCs were heavily infected and due to the missing critical files, they were rendered unusable.
    Plus its got the scan on the go feature which scans all the directories/url which we're visiting in real time. I don't know if I've missed something but Avast has always been good to me .
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  29. Truly in our case Avast provides psychological assurance to my friend that he has anti-virus installed at-least. In fact, he himself is a hard to get rid-off kinda virus that I can not ever neither get rid-off him nor I could deny/refuse him to offer FREE services like as in Beer.

    Hope, avast will meet all users expectations, as I do not use any personally.
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  30. Look folks, I know the difference between a quarantined or deleted file causing a problem and a problem being caused Specifically by a single program. In all three recent cases, removing Avast solved the problem. Once it was in a loop on an update, once it was scanning constantly, once it disabled the network card for no reason. History over years was not much better.

    I do not use these progs solely on my half-dozen of so PCs, but many dozens to hundreds of various customer PCs. Wide variation in user experience levels uncovers many issues. AVG does not suffer from these problems with anywhere near the frequency of Avast. For downloading AVG, it helps to know that Grisoft is the company that wrote it.

    The MBAM paid version has been both ineffective in removing problems that the free version did, and in having update and re-install problems. It's almost like it was written by a different team and company than the paid version.
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