What's your favorite virus/spyware scanner?

I fully agree with James -

I also have never had any serious infections and feel that what works for you is the way to go. Have tried ones that people and web sites and magazines all rave about and for various reason have disliked them or they did not work for me.

The nice thing about this particular thread is that one can find the names of many types of protective software , read the comments with a grain of salt and then choose for oneself. Prefer this to searching the web, magazines etc for what is good protective software.

 

I fully had this in mind when I created this thread. So you're welcome. lol...

 

I agree with jorjab and James on this subject - the thread title after all is "What's your favorite.. "

We got off on sort of tangent with Greg's search for security software for his clients - that's a different angle on this question.

Greg, I would consider, if feasable, to have different solutions for different clients based on the skill level and use. But I don't know how practical that is for you to implement.

Regards - Charles

 

I have been following this closely since the first post and find this a most informative thread. Personally, I tend to associate a few more "grains of salt" with some poster's comments than others but the overall discussion has been great. Have picked up a couple of tidbits that I was totally unaware of and one in particular that I would call an outstanding find.

Also of interest is the absence of any commentary on Microworld's free AV scanner. MWAV can be found here. It takes a while to run but its thorough and can be set to autoclean if desired. This will not interfere with any resident AV or Malware software and the intent here is to use it as an on-demand scanner. Dave Fear first brought this to my attention a couple of years ago and the product has been improved upon significantly since then. For those who think they are clean, I'd certainly recommend trying this.

Second Observation - and perhaps this is a stretch - no mention of any Root Kit scanners anywhere in the thread. Yes, I read the title carefully but its tough to tackle a problem machine without a full arsenal of tools. I'll leave this field blank because some of the better ones require a fair amount of study to be used effectively. However, its probably worth some attention, especially for those who don't have a couple of decent RK Scanners tucked away on a pocket drive.

CrunchDude - you done good on this one, son.

 

Hi Rock,

I didn't even think about anti Root Kit apps because as you pointed out, not for casual use to say the least. The name for this class of anti malware software is ARK.

I'll name one, which IMO is one of the best, if not the best: RKU - Rootkit Unhooker. And once again, as so many top tier anti malware tools are, authored by citizens of the former Soviet Union, in this case russian. Of course, a great deal of the malware comes from the same region as well.

Regards - Charles

 

Regarding MWAV

I freely admit that I did not do my homework on this one before running it but
Beware - it removed file associations from Explorer (FileExts) it thought were not valid. Now I have to reestablish a good many of them. One example is my Quicken 2006 file associations. In addition. I have some very very old documents created with Wordstar which I keep around and which Wordperfect will open. Do not want to save file in Wordperfect format as that increases the size of the file.

I made the false assumption (never assume anything!) that it would ask me before performing its removal and it did not. It did clear out some junk, claimed to have gotten some viruses and removed legitimate bookmarks. The viruses they removed were ones that Norton AV presumably catches and are virus types that have been around on the web for a long time so I am not sure they were really there.

It is a program I would be very careful in using and I should as I said have done my homework first before running it. If I had read some of the online reviews I would have been a little more cautious and probably would not have run it just yet.

This all leads back to the point of stick with what works for you and if everything ok, why change.

 

Jorjab:

Very sorry you encounterd issues. The latest release is pretty solid but its very thorough - a warning about auto clean is definately in order so others don't encounter the same or similar problems. Now I feel a little better about not listing a couple of the Root Kit Scanners that can be a little daunting.

 

Hi Rock,

Wanted to send you the link to RKU but their hosting site, Sysinternals, is experiencing spam or DDOS attacks.

RKU is in the process of changing hosting site - I'll let you know what the new address is as soon as I find out.

Regards - Charles

 

I have System Mechanic 6 Pro which includes Kaspersky AV and FW along with iolo's own anti-spyware. Their anti-spyware has caught a few things that Ad Aware and Spybot missed. I decided not to upgrade to version 7, so I will have to find alternatives before my licenses expire on November 8th. Tentatively, I am going with Comodo for both AV and FW.

Besides Ad Aware and Spybot, I also use Spyware Blaster.

Backup is your last line of defense, and I use Acronis 10 Home for the Windows and Linux systems. My FreeBSD system has recalcitrant hardware, so I use g4u instead. Once Windows has the backup, I burn it to DVD.

 

Windows Defender
Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition 10.1.0.401

 

Anti Virus

I had a horrible virus which spread over my network from a virus laden computer I was working on.
I know rather foolish of me.
I tried the whole gamut.
The only product that removed the last vestige of this parasite which would reinfect and spread was the free AVG product.
Very surprising.
Some of the shops that serve to remove viruses / spy ware / malware like a product called NOD32. It gives a 30 day trial.
They say it finds viruses the others miss. A major factor in their choice though is speed.
A product called Antivir was very good and used very little system resources.
However with a major update from version 6 to version 7 it now has become somewhat of a resource hog.

 

I guess I'll jump in here.

For Antivirus I use Computer Associates antivirus. It's served me well for a couple of years now, and I've never had any major problems with it.

For antispyware, I use a product which most people have probably never heard of. Ashampoo Antispyware. It can detect and remove over 680,000 types of spyware/adware. I got a great deal where I bought a license for this program for ten bucks (it normally retails for 30).

To get these deals though, you have to sign up to their newsletter, which means they'll bombard you with mail. Usually a couple per day for the first couple of weeks, but it slows down after that. I've gotten some great products through this system, and I didn't mind the offers. It's not like they sent me 500 pieces of mail a day.

I recently bought a license extension for 12 bucks for another years.


By the way there are a lot of great free antivirus programs out there, such as Avast Antivirus, AVG free, AOL Active Shield, and I'm sure more.

One that I've taken interest in is called Moon Secure Antivirus. For those of you who don't know, this is a free, open source antivirus. It's based on the ClamAV engine. The beauty of this software is it has an on guard/on access scanner, as well as manual scans.

ClamWin is another one based on the ClamAV engine, it's free and open source as well, but has no on access/on guard scanner.

I use Clamwin as my second opinion antivirus.

I forgot to add that Ashampoo Antispyware comes with other great features such as a Rootkit detection program, Internet file cleaner (for firefox and IE) IP spam blocker, and file wiper (which securely deletes files).

For firewalls I currently use the Windows XP SP2 firewall, but am looking for an alternative. I have tried Comodo Firewall before and liked it, but am wondering what else is out there.

 

I use AVG free edition at home and think it's a great tool. By the way Grisoft have launched a new anti-spyware for free, check the following link: AVG Anti-Spyware Free

I have another free security tools for you:
Avast!
Bit Defender 8, free edition
PC Tools Antivirus
Kaspersky Lab Free Virus Scan
Infected Or Not
Panda ActiveScan

I hope you like it