Anti Virus Rubbish

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A Lutra Continua
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Anti Virus Rubbish

#1 Post by A Lutra Continua » Tue Oct 20, 2015 11:46 am

Bah! Humbug!

Avast cocking up the old laptop and causing it to drag its heels so got rid of it and loaded Malware Bytes. Somewhere between the two they managed to eat a couple of the system files and the bastard thing won't even boot now.

I'm beginning to think these anti virus bits of skullduggery are nothing more than a virus themselves.

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Re: Anti Virus Rubbish

#2 Post by rgbrock1 » Tue Oct 20, 2015 11:57 am

A Lutra Continua wrote:Bah! Humbug!

Avast cocking up the old laptop and causing it to drag its heels so got rid of it and loaded Malware Bytes. Somewhere between the two they managed to eat a couple of the system files and the bastard thing won't even boot now.

I'm beginning to think these anti virus bits of skullduggery are nothing more than a virus themselves.


I've never run anti-virus utilities on any of my systems. And as long as you remain careful on the Interweb it shouldn't be an issue. And the main reason I don't run anti-virus software is for the exact reason you wrote above: they f**** up systems or, at a minimum, slow them down.

I'm assuming you're running some version of Windows? If so, can you boot to the "last known good configuration"? If not, what about a 'safe boot'?
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Re: Anti Virus Rubbish

#3 Post by Capetonian » Tue Oct 20, 2015 12:02 pm

I'm not too happy about not running any anti-virus at all, but that may be as a result of the paranoia that the virus check companies induce.

Our 'computer' man has recommended AVG Free as giving all the protection that most people need and being the least noxious in terms of memory burn and speed reduction.

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Re: Anti Virus Rubbish

#4 Post by rgbrock1 » Tue Oct 20, 2015 12:07 pm

Capetonian wrote:I'm not too happy about not running any anti-virus at all, but that may be as a result of the paranoia that the virus check companies induce.

Our 'computer' man has recommended AVG Free as giving all the protection that most people need and being the least noxious in terms of memory burn and speed reduction.


As a "computer man" myself I would second that notion: if you really, really find it necessary to run anti-virus software on your system then AVG free is probably better than most.
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Re: Anti Virus Rubbish

#5 Post by A Lutra Continua » Tue Oct 20, 2015 12:35 pm

Used to have it but it clashed with some other stuff so removed it and installed Avast. Hopefully they've sorted out the clash in the latest iteration, in which case I'll load it again if I can salvage the data on my laptop.

Becoming more convinced that the previous ones mentioned are indeed malicious software masquerading as something useful.

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Re: Anti Virus Rubbish

#6 Post by admin » Tue Oct 20, 2015 1:23 pm

rgbrock1 wrote:I've never run anti-virus utilities on any of my systems. And as long as you remain careful on the Interweb it shouldn't be an issue.

Agree with that. Once a week I run Malwarebytes on my Win 7 box, when I remember. Does a complete scan of all HDD's, just in case, but haven't found anything in years. Just need to be careful.

The main source of nasties are spam emails. I use an ancient email program called Eudora that doesn't attempt to interpret incoming emails, and only shows text component. MS Outlook is the worst email program for doing things you don't want it to.

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Re: Anti Virus Rubbish

#7 Post by ian16th » Tue Oct 20, 2015 7:03 pm

Another vote for AVG free and Malwarebytes, the other useful program that I use is CCleaner.

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Re: Anti Virus Rubbish

#8 Post by Bull at a Gate » Wed Oct 21, 2015 11:54 am

Please excuse my ignorance, but what's wrong with windows defender (which comes free with windows 10)?

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Re: Anti Virus Rubbish

#9 Post by rgbrock1 » Wed Oct 21, 2015 11:57 am

Bull at a Gate wrote:Please excuse my ignorance, but what's wrong with windows defender (which comes free with windows 10)?


It sucks system resources like a camel does water in the desert. Every time I boot up my Win 10 laptop the first thing I do is disable it.
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Re: Anti Virus Rubbish

#10 Post by henry crun » Wed Oct 21, 2015 10:02 pm

AVG free +1, no speed penalty and picks up trojans undetected by mcwhatafee. Used it on laptops, netbooks and tablets since the start of time.

Those of us on chromebooks get free protection courtesy of google, no need to install anything.

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Re: Anti Virus Rubbish

#11 Post by Bull at a Gate » Thu Oct 22, 2015 2:35 am

Thanks rgb, I will investigate the alternatives suggested here.

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Re: Anti Virus Rubbish

#12 Post by OFSO » Sat Oct 24, 2015 8:07 am

And yet another vote for AVG, although I upgraded to the paid version. One scan every night plus a restart if necessary, while I'm fast asleep. After three years with MalWareBytes I had big problems with the latest version which stuck: uninstalled, reinstalled, never worked. I sent them an e-mail, got an answer "due to the number of queries we are currently receiving we can't get back to you for a couple of days" (always interesting to hear that after a new version or upgrade is issued) - anyway they never did so I stopped using it.

BTW I was in my local Ford dealership last week - very large place, a chain of dealerships in three towns - all their PCs are still running XP. In fact all their printers are matrix printers, the plastic housings yellow with age. The guy I deal with in the service department said they've had no problems with the OS.

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Re: Anti Virus Rubbish

#13 Post by Rwy in Sight » Sat Oct 24, 2015 8:17 am

I go with Avast and Super Antispyware plus CCleaner. So far so good. As a matter of fact I have been use Avast for a number of years now.

RE Windows 8. Last Christmas I upgraded from a 2009 XP running no-name netbook to a Lenovo G50-30 mainly for security concern - theft of Credit card numbers tax- records etc.

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Re: Anti Virus Rubbish

#14 Post by OFSO » Sat Oct 24, 2015 1:18 pm

A drift from "VIRUS" to "CLEANER" - I am amazed how much crap CC Cleaner finds every night - OK so our PC is in intensive use about 8 hrs a day, still, always a lot there.

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Re: Anti Virus Rubbish

#15 Post by Keef » Mon Oct 26, 2015 10:11 am

AVG was good, then it went all lumpy so I changed to Avast (and now pay them $30 or so a year for the frilly bits). It works.

I looked at CCleaner, but it wanted to delete a whole load of stuff that I use, so it got the elbow.

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Re: Anti Virus Rubbish

#16 Post by OFSO » Mon Oct 26, 2015 11:38 am

it wanted to delete a whole load of stuff that I use

Yes, default setting is it deletes lots and lots, but one only has to set it up once to "keep this, scrub that" and afterwards it obeys instructions. Some of the other CC Cleaner tools are also excellent.

AVG also wanted to go it's own way when I upgraded to paid version, again a few mins (sorry Henry) spent setting it up and it's done what I wanted ever since.

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Re: Anti Virus Rubbish

#17 Post by CharlieOneSix » Mon Oct 26, 2015 4:30 pm

I upgraded Windows 7 to 10 a couple of days ago and for a few minutes after booting up W10 couldn't work out why my CPU was running at 99% and my fan speeds were not far off maxing out. Turned out that AVG Free - which was still installed - was fighting Windows Defender. Uninstalled AVG Free and all is back to normal with minimal CPU% at idle.
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Re: Anti Virus Rubbish

#18 Post by Firefly » Thu Nov 05, 2015 8:02 pm

I used and recommended AVG for a decade but it became bloatware like all the rest so, on the Windows boxes I still have, I just use the built-in Microsoft Security Essentials (I think it has a slightly different name post-Win7).

My main work machines are Linux boxes those. People I know and respect who still use Windows seem to recommend MalwareBytes.

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Re: Anti Virus Rubbish

#19 Post by Keef » Sat Nov 07, 2015 12:43 pm

Quite. Use only one Anti-virus - I still prefer Avast, but each to his/her own. I used AVG till a few years ago when it suddenly went horribly bloated. They may have fixed it now, but I changed to Avast which has done the job well since then so I see no real need to change again.

Malwarebytes is a different thing: it's not an Anti-virus. Run it every so often to check that there are no nasties lurking.

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Re: Anti Virus Rubbish

#20 Post by barkingmad » Wed Mar 16, 2022 8:54 am

No apologies for reviving an old thread but just in case anyone here is using this particular AV product, unsurprisingly the Germans just recommended us to give it the boot (pun intended!)

Germany warns against Russian anti-virus use https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-60738208

It’s probably as effective a measure as pouring Warrington produced vodka down the drains as a virtue-signalling anti-Putin anti-Russian sentiment... :-?

But one never knows, there may just be a bug or a virus or three contained in it’s resource-hogging code.

I wonder why William Gates became sooh interested in viri, though he does have form in producing and marketing bug-ridden products! =))

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