AV which *doesn't* check email

Hi all

I'm trying to find an AntiVirus solution which does *not* insist on checking email

this doesn't mean just disabling the email scan aspect of the antivirus - I've tried that with what's on the machine at the moment (AVG) and the program still intercepts the email, just doesn't check it!

this is for an older Win98SE machine which was perfectly OK when it had InnoculateIT or the earlier CA EZAV software (before they bundled the email checking in) - but the extra burden of checking email has overloaded the PC to such a degree that the POP server times out

ideally the AV solution would be free and would include real-time monitoring of file opening & closing, and an on-demand scanner. I'm quite happy downloading def updates myself - actually would prefer it non-automatic: automatic ones always seem to blast off at the most inconvenient moment

any suggestions / thoughts appreciated...

TIA & best wishes, HJ

 

Hi Hugh,

One of the AV's that I use does have the option to do as you describe, leave email totally alone, but - not free.

NOD32 (Eset) http://www.nod32.com/home/home.htm
The program is in modular form and easily controlled.

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/index.php has a NOD32 forum - very resposive, unlike some others I can name

Regards - Charles

 

thanks Charles

I will surely check out NOD - CA EZAV7 is the one we pay for at the moment, but I'm less happy with it than their previous products - no harm in investigating

and certainly have a look around Wilders

best wishes, HJ

 

Hugh Jarss--Norton AntiVirus offers the ability to "scan or not" either incoming or outgoing email or both. I never chose the options to "not" scan either/both so do not know whether "not" means email really is completely not affected by NAV.
NAV is available as NAV or part of NortonSystemWorks and Norton Internet Security. In the USA, almost every Sunday one or more of those are offered as "Free after Rebate" at stores that sell PC software. But the catch is you have to be "upgrading ". In the past, if you could show proof of having purchased any earlier version of any AntiVirus that would be good enough. But I am not sure that applies anymore, so in the first year you may have to pay the equivalent of about $30. But once in the system you can buy the next year's version "Free after Rebate ". That means you do not have to buy the subscription to the next year's Live Update.

 

I use NAV2004 with my Win98SE/OE 5.5 and the outgoing mail check turned off for the reasons Hugh stated. It appears not to bother with out going mail, whereas with the check turned on there was quite a delay while NAV checked the e-mails. More of a nuisance than anything. I leave the incoming check turned on for obvious reasons, but usually find no significant delay. If you did turn off the incoming check, I think NAV will scan any attachments, etc. when they are executed, so you still are basically covered.

Have you checked with the ISP to see if the POP server timeouts can be altered?

 

Jim - cheers for the reply

on the face of it NOD is sounding the better bet, as just disabling the scan will still (probably) leave me with AV downloading the email and then passing it on to my email client?

there's two parts to this:
1 - reduce the extra CPU (and particularly in this case virtual memory) required
2 - I'm trying to get away from having the mail client to server transaction intercepted for other reasons. Recently I tried one of these "over the top" reinstalls of Windows - first time for me, had seen lots of posts about it as a way of mending problems. I promptly ended up with a broken firewall (Kerio) which wouldn't even reinstall OK until I'd uninstalled the virus-buster; and was starting to think that the situation was likely due to the alterations made when the AV intercepted the mail client to server thing. Another thing in the "to be investigated" department...

anyway thanks for the thoughts - will be investigating the possibilities tomorrow and seeing what I can pick up on a visit to Wilders

best wishes, HJ.

 

oops sorry John missed yours while I was typing

I'm always set to plain text only on the mail client, and am quite happy with attachments getting checked when the incoming file closes

the dinosaur is only a 100MHz P1 / 32MB (compaq EDO memory is like gold dust)(or worse)(so it will be staying that way!)

it really is boggling how much clout seems to be required - with AVG at least - for the process of downloading into the AV and then passing on to the mail client

I think the ISP times us out after 60 seconds - what happens is that I can get the emails in but it times out before I can send the DELE back to the server (while AVG is passing the mail over to the mail client) will put the clock on it tomorrow

but hey! the dinosaur can keep up with real-time audio waveform display (Sound Forge, DX8) - so why is it so slow sending from one socket in itself to another? It was quite a useable internet machine until all the AV vendors started including email scanning.

so apart from the suggestions here I will be seeing if I can find other freebie AV solutions, even if trial period only, to see whether they are as heavyweight as AVG

at the moment I'm picking up the mail on another (less slow ) PC and sending it across over the network - which is tedious...

best wishes, HJ

 

Hi Hugh,

What did you decide to do?

Regards - Charles

 

Hi Charles

sorry for not posting back sooner - actually still working on this one!

I've had a quick look at NOD and will be trying an evaluation period soonish - it's a lot more expensive than CA (for us - we get an incredibly good deal with CA as we've been with them since InnoculateIT) but there's no harm in trying out the ESET product

Meanwhile had a go with Avast! and rather wish I hadn't it didn't go very well (understatement); to start with it looked rather like what I was after, I could leave out the email module and it's free.

Bewildering "simple" user interface looks a bit like a cassette player (but what is that lightning flash thing meant to do??) But finally I got the thing running and practiced EICARing myself etc to find out what I'd ended up with. And for a while it was looking fairly good.

When I turned on next day the computer completely trashed itself - got stuck in something rather like safe mode scanning system files v-e-r-y slowly; a rough calculation led me to think the scan wasn't likely to finish for several hours. No way to stop it or otherwise recover gracefully. At least I don't think there was - a bit hard to tell when user actions take ~2mins to produce any result, trying to work out what's under an "Always On Top"

Rebooted to a 640x480x16 display which looked as though it could be altered to either 640x480x256 or 800x600x16 but actually refused to budge. (Normally I should get 640x480x24bpp / 800x600x16bpp / 1024x768x256 from the 1MB graphics, no special drivers). Oh Gloom.

Worse, scanreg /restore wasn't really an option because I'd uninstalled AVG & would have been restoring to before that point, when AVG was still there - didn't feel like a good move...

(afterthought) - considering the mess I managed to make of it with the bits I could suss, it's probably a good thing I didn't try to experiment with that lightning flash icon...

==

So, I "rolled back" the OS (partition copy) to a known good state which happened to have EZAV6170 on it; upgraded to EZAV6309 which does check email...

...to discover that the machine was absolutely fine, even with the email checking enabled (actually loads of things magically speeded up, it was like a completely different computer)

AVG email check: CPU stuck at 100%, pegs the machine, line speed drops to patchy ~2k, server times us out
EZAV6 email check: CPU ~30%, line speed ~5.5K, everything works amazingly well

But I can't get EZAV7 to play like this. Yet.

And, despite hours of trawling around in circles I haven't yet managed to find out how long CA will be supporting the v6 products (never could get any sense out of "Sammy" the talking safe: plently of replies, but can I get it to answer my questions? Nope. Unsurprising if you look at the picture - darned thing ain't got no ears. Big mouth, arms smugly folded... no ears)

At the moment I've put EZAV6309 onto the dinosaur and AVG onto the "better" machine where the extra clout gets me through.

There are still lots of things need investigating - mainly with EZAV7 which I'm sure I should be able to get a lot better than at the moment. The scanning aspect, although nowhere near as lightweight as with v6, is not the major problem; it's what it does while "ticking over ", trying to work out whether I've gone on line so it can check for updates - which is breaking a load of apps. I now strongly suspect this is what's been troubling Nero, for example. Regularly, every minute (sussed with Process Explorer). I don't think broadband folks would get this...

Whew - apologies for the book! - lots to this though, lots still to do; will certainly post back with what I get from NOD when I've done it

main thing I've learnt so far - vitally important to get an AV solution which fits the machine. Getting it wrong has far reaching implications.

best wishes, HJ