Windows antivirus software

nidave · Thu 28 Dec, 2006 20.07

Wizard wrote:I use Norton Anti Virus. It is very good.

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... you were joking right?

Never seen a peace of software that was as as bad in all my life... The software my company writes (and I support) is broken once you install NAV... it also put loads of services on your system - fills the registry with pap and is imposable to remove completely.

AVOID.

Nick Harvey · Thu 28 Dec, 2006 23.34

Wizard wrote:I use Norton Anti Virus. It is very good.

I agree with Dave about Norton.

I asume your post was so short because of the twelve minutes per character typed problem.

Dr Lobster* · Fri 29 Dec, 2006 13.23

i think that's mainly because norton av went from being a simple file system filter driver to a product that actually re-implements huge portions of the windows kernel, such as the ip stack and parts of the io manager.

windows vista was supposed to put a stop to kernel patching (basically redirecting core functions of the executive by patching their locations in memory to a 3rd party process, which by the way is exactly the same method rootkits employ) but norton and macafee were particularly vocal about it, and we will be seeing the exact same problems with the next version of windows.

marksi · Fri 29 Dec, 2006 13.26

I also agree that Norton is a very large pile of poo and it will never infect one of my machines ever again.

Gavin Scott · Fri 29 Dec, 2006 13.28

Hmmm. A six month trial came with the new machine I bought.

I'll doubtless be back for advice on which one to purchase in a couple of months then.

marksi · Fri 29 Dec, 2006 13.37

Gavin Scott wrote:Hmmm. A six month trial came with the new machine I bought.

I'll doubtless be back for advice on which one to purchase in a couple of months then.

The new one I bought a couple of days ago came with a Norton trial and I seem to have properly removed it, though that may be because I didn't activate or run it at any point before removal. Have replaced it with AVG.

Nick Harvey · Fri 29 Dec, 2006 15.15

Dr Lobster* wrote:i think that's mainly because norton av went from being a simple file system filter driver to a product that actually re-implements huge portions of the windows kernel.

That sounds like sense.

I must admit to having been very impressed with my first version of Norton, which would have been with Windows 95 or 98.

Because I loved it, and like many other people had been taken in, I moved on to the version with XP when I upgraded, but started to wonder about system slowness.

When I foolishly allowed myself to upgrade to, probably, the 2004 version, the system practically ground to a halt and I was considering a new machine.

Somebody (possibly on here) suggested getting rid of Norton and replacing with AVG. I did this and could hardly believe the increase in speed of the machine. I didn't actually need a new one.

My McAfee experience is on a different machine, where I've not got the authority to take it off; but I'll bet that would speed up considerably without McAfee.

Incidentally, do any of the other AVG users on here get this occasional problem where it fails to auto-update and the icon goes to black-and-white? I'd be interested to know, plus any solutions you might know of.