Which TWO antivirus programs to use?

[AnitaPeterson]

Hi there,

I'm thinking I should install two antivirus programs on my machine (Win2k Pro).

Why two? Well, call it precaution - just in case one of them misses a new worm or something.

Now, the trick is that I DON'T want to keep the antivirus programs running all the time in the background. This eats my resources. Whenever I need to check out something I downloaded, I can scan it myself. Same thing goes for update - I'll update evry couple of days or so, but manually.


So...

Which ones should I use?

I can get the following:


AVG Antivirus 6.23 Personal Edition

McAfee Antivirus 6.02

McAfee Antivirus 7

Panda Antivirus Titanium 2.04

Norton Antivirus 2002

Norton Antivirus Corporate v8



So, for which two ones would you go?

 

[jfall]

Wow.. don't know why people get some worried about virus's.. 2 virus scanners is a little crazy imo... but I guess if I had to install 2, I would choose the latest versions of Norton and Mcafee

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Will Norton and McAfee play nice together in the system?

I seem to remember they didn't like each other? Or was that something happening only when they were both running in the background?

 

[Nothinman]

Any 2 virus scanners that both have filesystem hooks won't play nice together, and you'll get an even more noticable slow down as every file operation makes 2 programs scan the file for viruses before the OS can do what you really want it to do.

Skip the 2 antiviruses idea, it's dumb. The best way not to get a virus is not to be dumb, it's not that hard most of the time. MS makes it more difficult by making IE so poor from a security standpoint, but it would be much easier to run Mozilla than 2 antiviruses =)

 

[Antisocial Virge]

One good one would be fine. If you stop using OE I imagine the chances of getting a virus in the first place will drop considerably.

 

[JackBurton]

Uh dude, you better have at least have ONE anti-virus program running at all times in the background unless you have a stand alone machine and never install rouge software. You can get a virus by just visiting a website. Believe me, my anti-virus software picked up a virus when I hit an untrustworthy site. 🙁 No downloading required.

As for two AV software installed on one system, I wouldn't recommend it. Get AVG, it's all you need. 😉

 

[Nothinman]

You can get a virus by just visiting a website

You should qualify that by saying "with IE" because Mozilla is practically immune to that type of 'attack'. There have been a few security exploits for Mozilla but non are actively used (most likely because IE is so popular, which works in Mozilla's favor) and frankly noone comes close to the number of exploits fixed and unfixed in IE, it's astonishing how such a large corporation can code such a bad program.

 

[Renob]

You need to ad to the Poll for those of us who dont use any antivirus.

Never have Never will.😀

 

[Goi]

Originally posted by: Renob
You need to ad to the Poll for those of us who dont use any antivirus.

Never have Never will.😀

Well, hopefully you don't come to a point where you have to repeat what you wrote in your signature 🙂

 

[chemos]

use one program and leave the monitoring on. two often don't play nice together, and as long as you keep Norton updated, you shouldn't have to worry about missing worms. if you don't leave monitoring on, you can still contract worms and by the time you bother to scan it might be too late.

about OE, i don't think uninstalling it will fix the problem. numerous other clients run scripts as well and have a preview function. i would, however, recommend disabling the preview pane in OE and just deleting suspicious email. if you see one you're not sure about, right click it and get properties. you can check the source from there and read the text without executing any code.

(edit) in regards to MSIE, you can use it as well, just turn off activeX controls (options found in Tools=>Internet Options=>Security=>Custom Level) (/edit)

good luck!

 

[TheWart]

I use and like AVG; see no reason to have two, although I do supplement my scans with The Cleaner from Moosoft.

 

[Nothinman]

about OE, i don't think uninstalling it will fix the problem. numerous other clients run scripts as well and have a preview function

Name one other email client that would run javascript or vbscript in an email. The preview function itself isn't a bad thing, I use it for 100% of my email reading in Mozilla and Evolution, it's the fact that MS HTML renderer is so poorly written that there's security problems every few days.

(edit) in regards to MSIE, you can use it as well, just turn off activeX controls (options found in Tools=>Internet Options=>Security=>Custom Level) (/edit)

Very few sites actually use ActiveX controls (probably because they're IE and Windows specific, what's the point of a web page if it's only viewable on one browser and one platform?) and most of the exploits are either in the HTML renderer or the script engine (i.e. javascript, vbscript, etc) and disabling both of those would make the browser pretty useless.

 

[chemos]

Name one other email client that would run javascript or vbscript in an email. The preview function itself isn't a bad thing, I use it for 100% of my email reading in Mozilla and Evolution, it's the fact that MS HTML renderer is so poorly written that there's security problems every few days.

Netscape Mail can run javascript. i'm sure there are other clients, who at least don't have this option enabled by default. in any case, if you disable the preview pane in Outlook Express and avoid suspicious email (i already explained how to check ones you're not sure about) you'll be just fine. top that off with a good -updated- AV scanner in the background, and you won't get any viruses/worms. i don't know why people run away from OE screaming while if they just used it properly, it's actually a very capable piece of software.

Very few sites actually use ActiveX controls (probably because they're IE and Windows specific, what's the point of a web page if it's only viewable on one browser and one platform?) and most of the exploits are either in the HTML renderer or the script engine (i.e. javascript, vbscript, etc) and disabling both of those would make the browser pretty useless.

there's no reason to leave ActiveX controls enabled. true, not many sites use them--all the more reason to disable them. they are a serious threat to your machine and should not be allowed to run by default. if you keep MSIE updated, you shouldn't have any problems with exploits. again, it's just a matter of _maintaining your system_. i'd be very interested in conducting a test if you care to direct me to a website that will fudge my MSIE, and not any other script-enabled browser.

 

[Nothinman]

Netscape Mail can run javascript

But IIRC it's disabled by default, so you have to shoot yourself in the foot that way.

i don't know why people run away from OE screaming while if they just used it properly, it's actually a very capable piece of software.

Because:

A) I should be able to use a preview pane safely, it's possible with other mail clients.
B) It's got pretty bad IMAP support, since I keep my mail on an IMAP server it's important to me.
C) Most other mail program can have their mail and settings backed-up or copied just by copying one folder, very convenient.

if you keep MSIE updated, you shouldn't have any problems with exploits. again, it's just a matter of _maintaining your system_.

There's a slew of unpatched IE problems, I don't have the URL handy but hopefully n0c or someone with it bookmarked will read this and post it.

i'd be very interested in conducting a test if you care to direct me to a website that will fudge my MSIE, and not any other script-enabled browser.

I could probably set one up quickly but that wouldn't be a very good test =)

The fact of the matter is that MSHTML is a decent renderer (atleast it lets a lot of broken pages work and it's fast) but the security problems make it almost scarey to use and the IE shell around it is practically feature-less compared to Mozilla or Opera, so much so I can't see a reason to use IE anymore except for the few pages that require it and I havn't run into one of those in a while.

 

[crisscross]

get Norton AV Corporate 8.0 and turn on the monitoring on. Doesn't use up a lot of resources and is defn. lower than Norton 2002 or 2003. I had it running on a PII350! and never felt the need to get a different virus scanner