Poll: *** The All New Windows AV Thread - Keep All AV Questions in Here ***

What AV do you use?

  • Total voters
    812
Decided since updating Win 10 to the creators update I would just give Win defender a go with realtime enabled and remove Avast! Even in gaming mode Avast would still pop up with adverts. Is letting Win defender loose on its own a good idea?
 
Justb dumped Avast and now relying on Windows Defender and Firewall, with MalwareBytes as a scanner. I was getting fed up with the pop ups from Avast, and the general consensus seems to be that Win Defender is good enough.
 
I'm halfway through a Kaspersky total security trial. Anyone have any better/Other alternatives. I have no issues paying for a service especially as I run a business from home so it deductable
 
mattyg said:
I'm halfway through a Kaspersky total security trial. Anyone have any better/Other alternatives. I have no issues paying for a service especially as I run a business from home so it deductable
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Defender. How robust is your backup system?
 
KIA said:
Defender. How robust is your backup system?
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Not at all robust. To be honest pretty much non existent.

Daft as I have an old server with space and a Synology NAS. And currently two empty raid drives both with 1.8TB free.

I've just not got round to sorting it out. But Its on my to do now list.

Any comments on how, what, when.

Windows backup
Macrium reflect
Another

Kaspersky will let me Vault a whole drive and be password protected. Would that be a good backup place?
 
TBH, I'd never have any backups kept on the computer or on a NAS considering the ransomware trend and could easily encrypt said backups.

Have a dedicated backup external hard drive that is only connected to the computer to create the backup and is put away after it is done.
 
demonix said:
TBH, I'd never have any backups kept on the computer or on a NAS considering the ransomware trend and could easily encrypt said backups.

Have a dedicated backup external hard drive that is only connected to the computer to create the backup and is put away after it is done.
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Are you backing up files or a clone of HDD.

Are we looking at doubling our HDD space to back up everything.
 
mattyg said:
Macrium reflect
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I like Macrium, but anything is better than nothing, even the free solutions.

You could use Macrium to image your system on a daily or weekly basis, just in case. Macrium Reflect 7 Home Edition supports file and folder backup, should you wish to go down this route.

A daily file backup is essential. Have a look at Duplicati & Cobian Backup. Duplicati is free and can backup to local and remote destinations. I don't know how much data you have, but you should consider backing up critical data to "the cloud" or an offsite location. You can get 1TB of space from Google, Microsoft, or Dropbox, for an insignificant amount each month.

demonix makes a good point regarding disconnected backup. I use a mixture of Blu-ray and tape, but a hard drive will suffice.

Don't forget to run a test restore on a regular basis.
 
KIA said:
I like Macrium, but anything is better than nothing, even the free solutions.

You could use Macrium to image your system on a daily or weekly basis, just in case. Macrium Reflect 7 Home Edition supports file and folder backup, should you wish to go down this route.

A daily file backup is essential. Have a look at Duplicati & Cobian Backup. Duplicati is free and can backup to local and remote destinations. I don't know how much data you have, but you should consider backing up critical data to "the cloud" or an offsite location. You can get 1TB of space from Google, Microsoft, or Dropbox, for an insignificant amount each month.

demonix makes a good point regarding disconnected backup. I use a mixture of Blu-ray and tape, but a hard drive will suffice.

Don't forget to run a test restore on a regular basis.
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Cheers. Forgot we use dropbox. Been using it so long now. We store all our active files and spreadsheets on dropbox. So at least some of it is backed up.

I don't mind paying for the right solution. (I may have paid for Macrium a few years ago but chances are its an old version)

To be honest we don't have a lot of data( dropbox is just over 30Gb) which I suppose is really poor of me as it should be simple to sort out.
 
What is the least intrusive and lowest resource Antivirus these days?

I've yet again removed Avira from my home PC, I got sick of the hassle it is to whitelist a detection (it bloody triggers on many tools I use), blocks hosts file by default, blocks parts of the registry (couldn't create a Win PE environment with it active), and is basically a **** for a power user. But, it had a low performance impact.

Avast is a hog, it slows down steam download speeds greatly (Avast service takes a full core of cpu use when I'm downloading a new game on steam and it's limiting download speeds to 15-20 mb/sec instead of 50-60 megabytes/sec.).
Kaspersky used to slow my Iops significantly, installing a new program or copying many files from one hdd/ssd to another was significanctly slowed.

Basically, any AV that uses more than 1% cpu time (I have a 4.7 ghz i7 ffs) or slows down my Iops more than by 1% is a no-go, Defender slows down many things significantly too.

What is an A/V that:
- Doesn't noticably slow down the PC, seeing an A/V take up 25% cpu time or even more makes my blood boil. As does an Av that slows down copying files or installing programs or downloading stuff or rendering a webpage
- Allows for easy whitelisting of stuff like hacktools, cracks, etc... (Win def is easy in that aspect)
- Doesn't block access to stuff like the hosts file or registry by default
- Has something of a silent mode, I don't want to even see/notice my antivirus is there.

I'm currently running no anti virus at all on my private pc, disabled WinDef and running no alternative. As i'm sick of the slowdown or hassle/prompts.
 
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snowdog said:
What is the least intrusive and lowest resource Antivirus these days?

I've yet again removed Avira from my home PC, I got sick of the hassle it is to whitelist a detection (it bloody triggers on many tools I use), blocks hosts file by default, blocks parts of the registry (couldn't create a Win PE environment with it active), and is basically a **** for a power user. But, it had a low performance impact.

Avast is a hog, it slows down steam download speeds greatly (Avast service takes a full core of cpu use when I'm downloading a new game on steam and it's limiting download speeds to 15-20 mb/sec instead of 50-60 megabytes/sec.).
Kaspersky used to slow my Iops significantly, installing a new program or copying many files from one hdd/ssd to another was significanctly slowed.

Basically, any AV that uses more than 1% cpu time (I have a 4.7 ghz i7 ffs) or slows down my Iops more than by 1% is a no-go, Defender slows down many things significantly too.

What is an A/V that:
- Doesn't noticably slow down the PC, seeing an A/V take up 25% cpu time or even more makes my blood boil. As does an Av that slows down copying files or installing programs or downloading stuff or rendering a webpage
- Allows for easy whitelisting of stuff like hacktools, cracks, etc... (Win def is easy in that aspect)
- Doesn't block access to stuff like the hosts file or registry by default
- Has something of a silent mode, I don't want to even see/notice my antivirus is there.

I'm currently running no anti virus at all on my private pc, disabled WinDef and running no alternative. As i'm sick of the slowdown or hassle/prompts.
Click to expand...

I'm happy with Bitdfender Total Security 2018 (upgraded from 2017 version), I leave it on auto pilot mode so it is like not being there, so no nags etc, very light on cpu resources.

Review here https://www.tomsguide.com/us/bitdefender,review-3983.html .
 
Kaspersky AV is now free (not the Internet Security, though). You get all the features of the normal AV including web and mail scanner etc. It's nice and light and has low performance impact, and the usual KAV high scores in detection and prevention. No limitations at all compared to the previous gen paid product, no upsell, no ads etc. It's not been released in Europe yet (formally) but you can download the installer from Kaspersky's global/US site and it works fine. I've been running it for a few months now. Paid AV protection with minimal impact, for free. You can't really complain at that tbf.
 
As rainmaker above ^. I was using Panda free which comparitively was just as good for a number of months - just remember to switch off ads if you bumble about the settings. I was keen to try Sophos but for some reason it would never install halting on a check that another AV was present. I will try it at some stage either on another machine or I'm bound to reinstall this OS at some point.
 
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