Anti Virus
- Thread starter Methix
- Start date
Ignore this comment. I would never turn an AV off for any period of time. It's just not worth the small gains you get and the exposure you give your system if you have no Firewall or the Firewall is incorrectly configured.
M.
Man of Honour
- Joined
- 17 Feb 2003
- Posts
- 29,640
- Location
- Chelmsford
Use Avast Home (free), it uses very limited resourses and you can leave it running no matter what you do. Updates frequently too. 
I was using avast, but every time it updated itself it would shout out "ANTI VIRUS PROTECTION HAS BEEN UPDATED" and scare the hell out of me. Moved to AntiVir and this has got an annoying pop-up which keeps appearing to try and get you to buy it.
Bledd was talking about AV, where did you get firewall from?
99.9% of the time, getting a virus is down to user stupidity. fact
Agreed.
And turning off an Antivirus whilst having a connection to the internet is plain stupidity. Fact. Did the MSBlaster worms not teach you anything?
M.
99% (I do consider the majority of OcUK'ers to be in that other 1%) of pc users are people who wouldn't know sensible computer use if it hit them in the forehead repeatedly until it was stamped there forever more.
It's the same with stuff like third party firewalls, spybots system tea timer and UAC, the average user hasn't got a clue what they're being asked and therefore guess, either saying yes and infecting a machine or saying no and denying something that actually needs it.
Of course there's a healthy disclaimer that this is just in my experience
It's the same with stuff like third party firewalls, spybots system tea timer and UAC, the average user hasn't got a clue what they're being asked and therefore guess, either saying yes and infecting a machine or saying no and denying something that actually needs it.
Of course there's a healthy disclaimer that this is just in my experience
Man of Honour
- Joined
- 17 Feb 2003
- Posts
- 29,640
- Location
- Chelmsford
I'd rather have a voice saying it's updated than possible security risks tbh.
Avast does allow you to turn off the sound in the options.
AntiVir is also a very good antivirus and is only about £12 a year for the premium version which will stop the popup.
You can also stop the popup via other methods, however I would consider it disrespectful since they are allowing people to use it for free.
It was another layer. Not everyone uses XP SP2 onwards so some people have no firewall (be it hardware or software). The OP never stated the O/S he/she was using. The point I was trying to make is that if you reduce the security of your O/S just to get a extra couple of CPU cycles then you are mad. Turning off A/V for games (and most games run online and download online content) is definately not best practice.
M.
Man of Honour
- Joined
- 5 Oct 2008
- Posts
- 9,007
- Location
- Kent
Avast antivirus, and windows firewall are my protection. I've disabled the sounds in options and set it to check for fullscreen before displaying popups. Avast Home is very good and free. It doesn't suck up system resources either. And no, you shouldn't disable antivirus or firewalls when running programs, not if you are still conected to the internet.
You can probably tell from my sig that this is a theory I subscribe too as well. I have an AV installed but it isn't memory resident, I just manually scan any potentially dodgy downloads. I do use Comodo firewall though, as windows firewall is weak as pish [no outbound filtering].
I haven't experienced any "malware" in 10 years of PC ownership.
Last edited:
Man of Honour
- Joined
- 17 Oct 2007
- Posts
- 3,871
Hello Dano, specifically talking about User Account Control, would you then suggest turning it off?
Last edited:
Hello Dano, I am guessing that you would advise to disable User Account Control then?
hands up who has seen it pop up when they didn't expect it?
-anyone that puts their hand up is someone that is likely to get nailed anyway due to poor browsing / computer habits.