New anti-virus tool

vince3 · 18 Jan 2006 at 14:46

My free 90 day bundled e-trust is about to run out and I plan to change to Avast.
Is there a preferred sequence of operations when changing an AV product?
e.g Uninstall old, Install new or vice versa? Or it may not matter :confused:

vince3 · 18 Jan 2006 at 14:53

Ah - thanks for that. I would have assumed Add/Remove just looked for the built-in uninstall and linked to it.

vince3 · 18 Jan 2006 at 14:58

Hmm. There is no 'uninstall' in the Start Programs list for Computer Associates e-trust.
So it'll have to be Add/Remove or Norton Clean Sweep (I have Utilities 2005).
I guess I can use Norton System doctor to clean up the registry.

vince3 · 18 Jan 2006 at 15:10

Wyvern971 said:
You may find that if you have 2 av scanners installed simultaneously that your network connection no longer works properly

Yes - I'd heard that - hence the question. Guess I'll make a start.

vince3 · 18 Jan 2006 at 16:30

Oh dear

I removed e-trust OK. Nothing nasty left in the registry, but the Start-up check stayed in the Startup programs and kept telling me to update my registration. That was disabled with Winpatrol. I'll delete it later.

Avast installation started OK but at the end announced it was incompatible with ZoneAlarm and that my browser (Firefox) needed to use a manual proxy. I followed instructions to set it up, but no joy - no net access.
Avast say they are working with ZoneAlarm to fix this but it all seemed too messy. Also I wasn't sure if I should use the proxy with Thunderbird or IE which I use occasionally, and what about FTP, SSL etc settings in Firefox?

So for the time being I'm back with AVG which I was using before the new PC and e-trust

I may check NOD32 which gets good reports. Anyone know problems like Avast's with that?

vince3 · 18 Jan 2006 at 16:41

Skilldibop said:
i use AVG, it's free and it works, well. I'd say stick with it.

I expect I will. And I like the 'comfort message' on emails in and out if you want.