Anti-Virus software that sucks, and doesn't

[LinkinFart]

I stopped using AVG free long time ago because of all those false positives, BUT that was long time ago.

[Simmo!]

I want to suggest everyone....
forget about Norton you pay for it.

Some years back I worked in PC Support and Norton AV was our nemesis LOL. Error messages everywhere. More often than not we used to uninstall it and get an alternative, and often even the NAV uninstall would leave the user with unwanted error messages every time they booted. I'm sure things have moved on, but I still shudder at the thought of dealing with NAV.

[big_mac]

I have been using AVG free for years; but just got an infection even with it installed and running.
I pulled the drive out and scanned it, the AVG scan says it is clean but when I reboot I get the virus alerts. I also tried AVAST - that cleaned up some stuff that AVG didn't, but still had the AVG alerts immediately on reboot.

Then I scanned it with Sophos - it found 100+ infected files, I had to delete them, but it does actually seem to have fixed it - no more alerts with either AVG or Sophos.

At the moment, I am thinking that 'free=crap' is a definite possibilty for antivirus software!

[Marie2473]

I really hate Norton, it screwed my last computer up, sure they did pay for it, but still....
I now use f-secure, get it free from my job, and i have had no problems at all. And I also used to use AVG and it was great =)

[swampwitch]

I used the e-Trust suite for a couple of years because it came free with my Frontiernet high speed. It's very good, but at some point it decided not to allow Smartdownload, no matter how I tweaked the "allowed" bits...so for most of a year I couldn't play any RTG's.

I tried Avast, and except that it seemed to slow things down I was happy with it.

Now, I'm happy with a cocktail'o'freebies...AVG, Spybot Search and Destroy (minus that stupid Tea Timer thingy), Spyware Blaster, and Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware...with a weekly run of Wise Registry Cleaner and Wise Disk Cleaner. A couple of times a week I'll run the Windows Live OneCare safety scanner ( http://onecare.live.com/site/en-US/default.htm ) when I'm asleep.

Luckily, the IT guy from my day job is a friend, and once a month or so he stops by, plugs in the Big Box, and checks the 3 house computers. The other two have paid-for anti-everything, and usually they have minor things that have slipped through...but my personal 'puter with the freebie cocktail almost always passes with flying colors.

It's my experience with a little experimentation, one can have a clean computer with no out of pocket expense.

[bryand]

I must agree with the Norton haters. Its the worst!

I build pc's and have never paid for antivirus software. I scan regularly (and immunize) with Adaware and manually clean my registry with HiJackThis.

[KasinoKing]

I agree with everyone else - Norton sucks!
I've had it on my desktop PC for years - I was going to cancel it last year, but I forgot and they automatically renewed it and charged me 70-ish quid for the privilege.
Being a lazy SOB I let it ride for another year - but when it runs out at Christmas time, that's it - it's history.
Norton does have some very good features - but there are far too many things going on in the background which bring my already very slow old PC to a halt - it's just tooooo frustrating!!

I use Avira on my laptops (one free, one premium), which is much less resource hungry and I have not had any virus problems (touch wood!) in 4 years.
The only complaint I have is the false-positive it throws up every time it scans, or I try to run 3Dice.

KK

[NASHVEGAS]

Panda +1

[Jasminebed]

I'd have to join the Norton hater's club.

I'm currently using F-secure, part of my cable package, and I am very happy with it.

There was a period of almost a year that F-secure for Vista was not available to me as part of my package, and I used AVG freeware. While it did not block incoming spyware, I ran the free spyware cleaner regularly and zapped them off my computer.

Paid memberships get the blocking feature. And it's significantly cheaper than Norton or McAfee.

[skiny]

I haven't used Norton in over 10 years. I quit using it when I used to run Windows 95 because I found it was a terrible resource hog.

I've been using McAfee since then and I used to swear by it but that's changed recently too.

With Mcafee running I mangaged to somehow get a trojan from some website and it infected everything including Mcafee. McAfee would run but all services were stopped and turning them on would give me the blue screen of death.

I contacted McAfee since I was paying for the software and they blamed my hard drive. After a lengthy conversation to convince them that my hard drive is scanned on a regular basis and everything was fine before I got this trojan they told me not to worry because they have a "crack team" of virus specialists that could remove any virus from my system... for 60 dollars.

That's when I got pissed. I said - Your company sold me this software designed to protect my computer from viruses and trojans and in the end the software couldn't even protect itself. You would think that no matter what the hell was happening to my computer the software protecting me would at the very least be capable of self preservation. So now you're asking me to pay you 60 dollars to remove a virus from the very software that you sold me that's supposed to be protecting me from viruses?

I gave up. I formatted the hard drive. I bought a second hard drive. I reinstalled everything on the second hard drive including McAfee since I'm still subscribed to it for almost a year and the virus problem has only happened once. I still don't trust it but it's better than nothing.

Then I bought Acronis True Image. Now once a week my computer automatically creates an image of my new hard drive on the original hard drive. I don't trust any AV software anymore. Somehow the crap manages to get in eventually anyway and this time I won't even bother trying to clean it. I'll just put the image of my uninfected drive back and carry on like it never happened.