AVG 8.0 anti virus

[davidh]

Just installed it this week.

AVG 7.5 not supported after end of May 2008.

Combines anti virus + anti spy

It claims that the Search Shield and Link Scanner in both MS IE & Firefox provides "real time" (as opposed to database based) evaluation of search engine results. So I tried disabling my McAfee SiteAdvisor and using AVG 8 extensions to Firefox INSTEAD. BUT is appears that the Search Shield is getting mysteriously turned off in the "advanced" options somehow. So I decided to disable the two AVG "extensions" in FF and reenable McAfee SiteAdvisor.

Seems to me that a superior real time safety evaluation based protection that mysteriously turns itself off is NOT superior to an inferior database based safety evaluation that seems to stay working most of the time.

Anyway , regardless , the "green button" sitting in the FF status bar reduces my stress level slightly by its reassuring presence in my field of vision :D

Maybe I'll try turning the AVG Search Shield back on later after some AVG updates?

David H

BTW, since AVG 7.5 is going extinct and 8.0 does not run on Win 98 & Win 95, I uninstalled AVG 7.5 (brute force since regular uninstall failed) and installed AVAST on my Win 98 system but don't know if it'll completely expire (e.g. no more updates) after 60 days or not. Didn't read the fine print yet.

[davidh]

I tried setting the AVG 8 "Search Shield" option thru the AVG software per se instead of the FF browser AVG (FF extension) tool bar. Seems maybe more stable, I hope.

Seems also as if running both AVG 8 "Search Shield" *and* McAfee SiteAdvisor together do not conflict and do not mess up search page in Google noticeably.

AVG safety evaluation icons seem to take longer to appear in search pages (e.g. in MS IE) than SA evaluation icons (green yellow red). So I assume AVG is maybe doing a possibly more thorough real time scan of the site (as opposed to DB).

BTW, I discovered that McAfee SA has two (2) components in MS IE. Toolbar is separate from search page component and apparently each might be separately loadable. E.g. not load toolbar (SA) to save window space.

David H.

[Peter Creasey]

I uninstalled AVG 7.5 (brute force since regular uninstall failed)

David, Are you talking about the Free version?

I have downloaded AVG Free V8 (it was big, around 46 MB) but have not installed it.

How did you uninstall AVG 7.5? What do you mean "brute force"? Won't Windows Add/Remove Programs uninstall it?

Thanks for any details!

[davidh]

David, Are you talking about the Free version?

I have downloaded AVG Free V8 (it was big, around 46 MB) but have not installed it.

How did you uninstall AVG 7.5? What do you mean "brute force"? Won't Windows Add/Remove Programs uninstall it?

Thanks for any details!

I downloaded and installed the Free AVG 8.0 on Win XP. I decided to uninstall 7.5 on Win XP BEFORE installing 8.0. The uninstall on XP went ok.

On XP, the install of Free AVG anti-virus 8.0 also UNINSTALLED my Free AVG anti-spy, because 8.0 INCLUDES anti-spy (which I did not realize at first).

On my Win 98 system, I tried to uninstall Free AVG anti-virus by using Windows Add Remove Programs in control panel. I tried it several times and it always failed (I forget the error message). I wanted to clean out AVG completely before installing AVAST. AVG 8.0 will not run on Win 98 is why. So I eventually manually deleted all folders named "grisoft". Then I ran my old Mijenix/Ontrack Fix-It 3.0 many times to clean out the registry of all the AVG junk. Then I ran Norton Cleansweep uninstall to uninstall any further leftovers of AVG , probably followed by another run of Fix-It to check the registry for junk. Before finally installing AVAST which runs on Win 98 and probably even on Win 95. I was not too surprised that uninstall of AVG anti virus on Win 98 did not go smoothly since Win 98 has been unsupported by MS for almost 2 years now.

At this point today, AVG Anti virus anti spy 8.0 free seems to be running fine on my Win XP and even the AVG 8 Search Shield and AVG 8 toolbar add ons in MS IE 7 and FF seem to be ok now (possibly because I enabled AVG 8 Search Shield add on via AVG 8 "control center" per se (instead of thru the browser add on).

As I said, running AVG 8 Search Shield plus McAfee SiteAdvisor together does not seem to cause problems on search engine search pages. Every site in search engine results now gets three ratings 1. Finjan (FF only) 2. AVG 8 Search Shield 3. McAfee siteadvisor.

Siteadvisor is actually NOT redundant since their ratings also include spammishness rating in addition to exploit rating. I don't know how much overlap there might be between AVG Search Shield and FF Finjan Safe Browsing. I don't think there is full overlap because the Free AVG 8 does NOT include AVG "Surf Safe" apparently which for AVG is apparently a higher level of AVG safe surfing.

As long as the add ons don't slow down browsing too much I don't mind having them installed in FF. Since I have 1. Finjan (FF) 2. Siteadvisor (FF & IE) 3. AVG Search Shield (FF & IE) 4. FireKeeper (FF) all installed I'm probably at a point of "diminishing returns", but not knowing exactly what each add on does I'm assuming they are not totally redundant wrt each other.

David H

[davidh]

(I am attempting to reply to the root msg in the thread. Will be interesting to see where this msg hooks into the msg tree.)

I think AVG (Grisoft) and other AV vendors are more or less forced to increase the addition of other-than-signature-based defenses, such as AVG 8 Search Shield, because signature based defenses only protect to about 60 or 70 % level and signature based defense will probably get ever weaker as time goes by.

David H

[Peter Creasey]

I only want the basic AVG Free version. It is easy to avoid all the other bells and whistles?

Thanks!

[davidh]

I only want the basic AVG Free version. It is easy to avoid all the other bells and whistles?

Thanks!

Version 8.0 of AVG Free is exactly what I installed on my Win XP.

I took the DEFAULT install. It just so happens that the default includes free AVG anti spy.

Previously, AVG anti virus (7.5) and AVG anti spy (7.5 coincidentally or not, I don't know) were SEPARATE products. AVG 7.5 anti virus was available in a free version (as you know). AVG 7.5 anti spy was NOT free (i.e. auto update of signatures and auto run of resident anti spy expired after 30 day trial, however ON DEMAND scans and manual signature updates WERE still free after 30 day trial.)

It IS possible to turn off the free anti spy feature in AVG 8. But I don't see any reason to do so unless one already has a better anti spy program installed.

Likewise the Search Shield feature is a DEFAULT add-on provided with AVG 8.0 that helps protect both MS IE *and* Firefox. I would NOT turn it off unless one had a very good reason for doing so. Why? Because I'm guessing that it could block a significant percent of attacks/exploits which resident signature scanning (by all anti virus vendors no matter who) would MISS.

It is now EASY for hackers to generate exploits of vulnerabilities for which patches have been distributed AUTOMATICALLY within hours or minutes of availability of the patches (patches for Windows and any 3rd party apps too).

Furthermore it is EASY for hackers to change the signature of an exploit EVERY time it is downloaded. No database of signatures could ever keep up and even if it could you would need a supercomputer to scan the database in realtime (resident scanning).

If one for some reason decided to turn off the AVG 8.0 Search Shield, I'd recommend at least using Firefox with the NoScript addon. If one really did not want to do that minimum additional precaution, then I'd recommend getting a full Security Suite for money from one of the major vendors and taking the default install.

The information I'm giving here is nothing new. These trends have been going on increasingly over the last year or two or more. It only makes sense. Computers are for automation. So why should the bad guys not automate their techniques for defeating the good guys. The only reason that the bad guys did not do this sooner was it was not obvious to the non-tech criminals how to make a lot of money with crimeware. Now it's plain to see that it's worthwhile for the dummy criminals to hire software engineers to make tools to fight the good guys. And the crooked software engineers have realized that the can sell software kits for making exploits and attacks for spamming and ID theft to make money and sell the kits themselves for money. Healthy free enterprise at work, no?

D.H.

P.S. I apologize if my previous posts were confusing. I was talking about TWO different computers (1. Win XP and 2. Win 98). (AVG 7.5 runs on Win 98 BUT AVG 8.0 will not run on Win 98, but I assume that most if not all Tapcis forum visitors are not running Win 98 now).

[Peter Creasey]

David, Thanks for the good feedback.

My reason for using just the basic AVG Free anti virus is to minimize the resource hogging.

I plan to experiment with the AVG Free 8.0 install on my backup laptop today to see if I can do a customized install with just the AV.

[davidh]

My reason for using just the basic AVG Free anti virus is to minimize the resource hogging.
Grisoft claims that 8.0 is faster than 7.5. Also, to me it would NOT make sense to have two SEPARATE resident scanning engines running simultaneously in 8.0 , one for anti virus and the other for anti spy, so I assume there is only ONE scanning engine. If that is the case, I doubt that you'd get any performance payback by disabling the anti spy.

Furthermore, if you don't have any additional protection in your browser, such as NoScript in Firefox, I sure would NOT disable the AVG Search Shield feature, unless I were using the free Secunia PSI or free Trend Micro Housecall to scan my PC religiously for unpatched vulnerabilities. Housecall (free online scan) scans for all of virus, spy, and unpatched ON DEMAND so it is slow and best run when you are not using the computer for anything else (I only use it rarely).

[ndebord]

Just installed it this week.

AVG 7.5 not supported after end of May 2008.



David,

AVG 7.5 is supported until 12/31/08. The banner is misleading advertising, or perhaps poorly thought out pr.

<sigh.

Having said that, I just got done uninstalling AVG 8. Couldn't figure out how to get it to properly use Foxmail 5 for incoming email scans. And the interface was cryptic at first glance. So went to AVAST 4.8. What a disaster that was. When I did decide to remove it, it froze my Thinkpad XP PRO, SP2 solid. Had to power reboot and then use a registry cleaner to get rid of it altogether. Am back to 7.5 free for now and actively looking for something else out there.

<sigh>

[Dan in Saint Louis]

actively looking for something else out there
Avira. Free (http://www.free-av.com/). Fast. Tests better (http://www.av-comparatives.org/seiten/ergebnisse_2008_02.php) than AVG.

[ndebord]

Avira. Free (http://www.free-av.com/). Fast. Tests better (http://www.av-comparatives.org/seiten/ergebnisse_2008_02.php) than AVG.

Dan,

As I recall, avira doesn't have a real time email scanner? (Which is the main thing I'm looking for to work with Foxmail.)

[davidh]

Having said that, I just got done uninstalling AVG 8. Couldn't figure out how to get it to properly use Foxmail 5 for incoming email scans. And the interface was cryptic at first glance. So went to AVAST 4.8. What a disaster that was. When I did decide to remove it, it froze my Thinkpad XP PRO, SP2 solid. Had to power reboot and then use a registry cleaner to get rid of it altogether. Am back to 7.5 free for now and actively looking for something else out there.

Right now I am using Thunderbird IMAP protocol to haul my Gmail. It's rather slow, so I hope I'll go back to POP3. Since I use mainly Gmail and Yahoo mail, I rely on their spam and virus filters mainly. However, AVG 8.0 also seems to work ok when I DL mail Thunderbird. However that might be only for the little used POP3 account I'm checking now. Don't know if AVG works for IMAP mail filtering.

If I stop using Thunderbird, I might go back to Foxmail or to Pegasus. Another email program I've been thinking about is Opera. I admire Opera for being multiplatform (like TBird) but also being both a good browser and email program. I think Opera DL is smaller than either of FF or TBird, something to think about. My theory is that if the program is smaller then there's less room for junk inside it HaHa.

I have not studied the AVG 8 interface much. But I did notice that to get the type of configuration interface that I was used to in 7.5 AVG "Conrol Center" the plainest way I've seen so far is to use the drop down menu. Perhaps less graphical but similar functionality as old interface.

I'm still used to the MS Programmer's Workbench and TAPCIS menu interfaces even tho I've not used them in years. I'll probably never master a music keyboard but I'm sort of hooked on keyboard menu interfaces :(

OTOH it's easier to use mouse when drinking beer.

I'm glad than AVG 8 has anti spy included for free. I don't know exactly what it does tho' so for now I'll leave my old Spybot S&D TeaTimer turned on.

Anyway Spybot S&D is great for figuring out what the heck the stuff in the MS Win startup registry entries do (good, bad, or neutral).

[davidh]

As I recall, avira doesn't have a real time email scanner? (Which is the main thing I'm looking for to work with Foxmail.)

Nick, I just tried doing a email DL with the Foxmail installed on the same computer where I have AVG 8. AVG did NOT seem to be scanning the DL. I wonder if it has to do with the fact that TBird might be set as my default email program (not sure if that's the case)?
I suspect that it would be possible to set AVG 8 and Foxmail to work together, but it's not on my now to do list.

I wonder if one might have to set email proxy setting manually in Foxmail???

DH

[davidh]

As I recall, avira doesn't have a real time email scanner? (Which is the main thing I'm looking for to work with Foxmail.)
In AVG 8 under Tools | Advanced , I think , there are email and POP3 proxy settings. Seems to handle SSL for POP3 too. I have not tried adjusting it yet, since it would not work on, IMAP which I now use for Gmail, anyway.

D.H.

[Dan in Saint Louis]

As I recall, avira doesn't have a real time email scanner? (Which is the main thing I'm looking for to work with Foxmail.)
The way I read it the free version does not scan attachments during download, but does if you try to open them.

[Peter Creasey]

David, I am still undecided whether to disable Resident Shield, especially I have learned that disabling Link Scan makes the AVG icon in the systray go gray. I suspect the same thing would happen were Resident Shield to be disabled.

It is bothersome to me that such good software packages as AVG are allowed to get bloated with few options for the users to trim the excess.

[davidh]

David, I am still undecided whether to disable Resident Shield, especially I have learned that disabling Link Scan makes the AVG icon in the systray go gray. I suspect the same thing would happen were Resident Shield to be disabled.

It is bothersome to me that such good software packages as AVG are allowed to get bloated with few options for the users to trim the excess.

I am not sure that calling AVG 8.0 "bloated" is fair:

1. anti-virus and anti-spy were combined into a single program. In my opinion anti-spy is just as essential as anti-virus so I don't see how it's fair to call combining two essential and related functions into one as "bloat".

2. the future of security definitely does NOT seem to be in scanning (resident or not) based on signature databases. That is increasingly obsolete technology. If Grisoft had not introduced Search Shield, Link Scan, etc. into their new product I would say that would represent NEGLIGENCE (at least for paying customers) and a FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY (for non paying customers).

3. I do not think that Grisoft should be "blamed" for making their sys tray icon turn grey when Link Scan is turned off. It also turns grey when email scanning is turned off.

If I did not have other security features of other software working for me and was relying totally on AVG 8 for security, I'd definitely turn on ALL features. I have all turned on now anyway.

It may be that AVG 8.0 actually requires more horsepower to run than 7.5, I dont' know. Lack of PC horsepower is the only reason that I can think of for disabling any features of AVG 8.0 and I'm not even sure that turning them off would actually improve bandwidth (so to speak) in a noticeable way.

In the area of security (on Windows, esp.) I think that feature creep is necessary and unavoidable since the nature of the attacks is much different than it was even a few years ago.

The only way I see to avoid this problem (to a limited degree) is to switch to a different OS or buy a more powerful computer. LINUX or FreeBSD might be good choices.

David H.

[fhaber]

Dan, was that a full vote of confidence for Avira? I'm losing confidence in Eset with their v.3 - too many hickies. (2.6 is still supported, and works well, with their sort-of-antispyware all-in-one engine architecture.)

My buddies are having a raft of little problems with AVG8 and Firefox.

There's a lot of interest in a lighteweight solution for responsible adults (when terrorists, mass murderers and teenage boys are not going to be using one's computers).

[davidh]

As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, AVG 8 has browser add ons called "Link Scan" and "Search Shield".

After a little bit more digging around, it seems that AVG takes a dual strategy in fighting against threats that attack via the browser, namely, both live scans of web sites to detect bad stuff and database lookup of links/sites/domains ratings.

I'm guessing that the live scans of the web sites visited, for maliciousness, can have the results reported back to Grisoft, if the user (you and me) so authorize via settings.

I highly doubt that this would be a privacy issue. And even if it might be a potential privacy issue, I'm still getting something for nothing by using the free version, so it's not a bad deal.

I want to emphasize that I have absolutely no evidence at all that there is an actual "privacy issue".

Anyway, to put it in perspective, I use both Yahoo and Gmail and often don't sign out or erase cookies, etc. after checking mail, so I don't see the fact that I'm assisting AVG to collect intelligence against the bad guys as a problem.

David H

[Dan in Saint Louis]

Dan, was that a full vote of confidence for Avira?
I'm not the resident expert. All I have to go on are the results at AV-Comparatives (http://www.av-comparatives.org/seiten/home.html), especially the tabulated ratings (http://www.av-comparatives.org/seiten/overview.html) of the last few tests and the past few numerical online results (http://www.av-comparatives.org/seiten/comparatives.html).

I notice no performance impairment from Avira, AVG or eSet. I can't say the same for McAfee<G>.

[Jeff]

[QUOTE=davidh;44220]Just installed it this week.

AVG 7.5 not supported after end of May 2008.

Combines anti virus + anti spy QUOTE]

This just started happening, with Rootkit version 1.1.0.42

"AVG Anti-Rootkit Free Edition Important notice
As AVG Anti-Rootkit is now only included with commercial versions of AVG 8.0. Updates for AVG Anti-Rootkit Free will no longer be available."

Is 'rootkit' now called 'anti spy'?

- Jeff

[davidh]

"AVG Anti-Rootkit Free Edition Important notice
As AVG Anti-Rootkit is now only included with commercial versions of AVG 8.0. Updates for AVG Anti-Rootkit Free will no longer be available."

Is 'rootkit' now called 'anti spy'?

- Jeff

Until just recently, Grisoft had at least 3 separate free anti-malware programs:

1. anti-virus (the oldest)

2. anti-spy

3. anti-rootkit

The anti-spy had all features enabled for free for the first 30 days. After that, signature definition files had to be updated manually and scans run on-demand instead of "resident / real-time".

A rootkit is a special type of malware that takes control of the computer while it's booting up and it hides "underneath" the normal OS. Sometimes rootkits are almost impossible to detect. For example, some rootkits use certain features of the hardware and/or OS to make the file in which the rootkit itself resides to become "invisible" so that virus scanners can't find it.

I believe there was a case a year or two ago in which Sony put a (benign) rootkit on some DVD disk(s) with the intent being copy-protection, or something like that. I think Sony had to relent and offer some kind of compensation or removal of its rootkit to buyers of the DVD. The existence of such a benign rootkit apparently also made the OS more vulnerable to malicious rootkit attacks.

The word rootkit does not really describe the malicious intent of the malware as much as the type of infection. That is, it is an "omnipotent" infection in the sense that it has equal or greater control over the system than the most powerful or highest authorized system administrator on the system.

One way to bypass rootkits is to boot from CD-ROM. So if an OS were booted from a clean CD-ROM then the software code of the rootkit would still exist somewhere on the regular hard disk and it should be possible for the software booted from the CD-ROM to find the rootkit (file or sectors, etc.) if that software was smart enough to know how and what to look for.

Rootkits certainly are a danger, but AFAIK are NOT the most prevalent type of exploit out there.

One of the most prevalent types of attack today is a multistage attack on legitimate web sites:

1. hacker injects a short one liner script command somewhere into a (SQL) database on the legit server

2. user visits the legit web site and in response to his legit query/clicks some web page is served up containing the short one liner script command.

3. If the required type of scripting (e.g. javascripting) is enabled on the user's web browser then the browser will run the command

4. running the command takes user to a bad guy's web site

5. on the bad guy's web page is more script which asks the user's browser to view a movie, play some music, run a java applet, display a PDF or DOC or other doc, etc. Whatever the media , doc , or applet is , it is designed to contain code and/or data which exploits a bug in the program normally used to play , view , display, etc. such a file.

6. the bug causes a certain kind of crash in the vulnerable program that lets the bad guy's code/program get control of the computer.

In many cases (maybe 20 to 40%) the antivirus program on the user PC will NOT have a signature def to catch the bug exploiting data/code in the file to be played.

One of the reasons that this type of attack is so successful for the bad guys is that the main place where it ought to be blocked is not in the browser, not in the database server , but actually in code written by "flunky" database programmers (not super computer scientists and engineers and computer security specialists) who don't do adequate checking of input data going into the SQL database. It the old garbage in garbage out idea. Except in this case the garbage out is poisonous.

It's not quite realistic to expect all database flunkies and managers, etc. to be highly diligent.

It's not realistic to expect users to block scripting coming from the legit site where the legit database resides either, since it is a legit site and they probably need javascript enabled to even use the DB site at all.

However, there is one weak point that the bad guys have. That is, there is no reason for a user to have javascript enabled for a bad guy's site.

Therefore one can stop the playing of the exploit file coming from the bad guy site in a couple ways:

1. raise security to high in MS IE and put sites you need to use scripting on in your "trusted zone"

or

2. use Firefox with Noscript to block all non whitelisted sites by default.

It's basically the same approach, just that NoScript makes the listing and delisting of sites in the whitelist much easier than doing it all by hand in MS IE.

The other main defense is to keep ALL the programs that could be fired up by your browser UP TO DATE i.e. PATCHED.

Of course, it's better to have more than one "wall" between you and the bad guys / exploit. e.g.

1. imposing limits on scripting (e.g. Noscript) can keep the exploit (media/doc) file from ever being DL'd to your browser/PC.

2. patching (e.g. with notice from Secunia) both OS and all other apps makes it highly unlikely that an exploit could do anything even if it bypassed anti virus and anti spy.

David H.

[ndebord]

[QUOTE=davidh;44220]Just installed it this week.

AVG 7.5 not supported after end of May 2008.

Combines anti virus + anti spy QUOTE]

This just started happening, with Rootkit version 1.1.0.42

"AVG Anti-Rootkit Free Edition Important notice
As AVG Anti-Rootkit is now only included with commercial versions of AVG 8.0. Updates for AVG Anti-Rootkit Free will no longer be available."

Is 'rootkit' now called 'anti spy'?

- Jeff

Jeff,

Panda has a standalone anti-rootkit product.

http://www.download.com/Panda-Anti-Rootkit/3000-8022_4-10717196.html?part=dl-PandaAnti&subj=dl&tag=button&cdlpid=10717196


Not half bad.

[Jeff]

[QUOTE=Jeff;44322]

Jeff,

Panda has a standalone anti-rootkit product.

http://www.download.com/Panda-Anti-Rootkit/3000-8022_4-10717196.html?part=dl-PandaAnti&subj=dl&tag=button&cdlpid=10717196

Not half bad.

Got it. Thanks. But I'm astounded to see a .zip file. I'm not too certain what I'm going to do about that as all of my unzippers got left behind during a computer change a few years ago. That's the first .zip I've seen in years.

- Jeff

[Dan in Saint Louis]

I'm not too certain what I'm going to do about that as all of my unzippers got left behind during a computer change a few years ago.
Isn't zip/unzip built into XP?

[sidney]

[QUOTE=ndebord;44332]all of my unzippers got left behind during a computer change a few years ago

The open source command line unzipper from the INFO-ZIP project can be downloaded from here (ftp://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/tools/zip/info-zip/WIN32/unz552xN.exe) as a self-extracting exe file for 32 bit Windows platforms.

A Windows GUI for it can be downloaded from here (ftp://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/tools/zip/info-zip/WIN32/wiz503xN.exe), also a self-extracting exe.

The separate command line program for zipping is here (ftp://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/tools/zip/info-zip/WIN32/zip232xN.zip). That one is a zip file which you unzip with one of the above.

The documentation is included with them.

[ndebord]

[QUOTE=ndebord;44332]

Got it. Thanks. But I'm astounded to see a .zip file. I'm not too certain what I'm going to do about that as all of my unzippers got left behind during a computer change a few years ago. That's the first .zip I've seen in years.

- Jeff

Jeff,

As Sydney said, there are plenty of zip utils out there. Here is one freeware listing:

http://aumha.org/freeware/mfzip.htm

I use a shareware version of power archiver (nag screen), but they do have an older, 16 bit version that is free:

http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/index.html

[Jeff]

Isn't zip/unzip built into XP?

To test that idea I just double clicked on the .zip file, and up popped WinZip, which I had totally forgotten I'd dl'ed a long time ago specifically to unzip the password decoder "Revelation". WinZip complained that I'd exceeded the evaluation period of 45 days; specifically that I've had it installed for 682 days. Then I noticed that the "Use Evaluation Version" button was hot, and guess what? Yup. Further experimentation revealed that the use evaluation version button starts out grey, but as the pgm counts up the installed days it becomes hot at day 150.

As to the zipping itself someone dated himself to the days of 1200 bps modems. The .zip is 300k. In the .zip is an .exe of 700k. Why bother?

- Jeff

[Dan in Saint Louis]

As to the zipping itself someone dated himself to the days of 1200 bps modems. The .zip is 300k. In the .zip is an .exe of 700k. Why bother?
One reason, not necessarily applicable in this case, is that many email administrators block EXE attachments but not ZIPs.

[sidney]

One reason, not necessarily applicable in this case, is that many email administrators block EXE attachments but not ZIPs.

Another reason is that even a slightly corrupted file or one downloaded in ascii mode instead of binary mode will probably not unzip, providing a good integrity check for the download.

[Mike]

I'm losing confidence in Eset with their v.3 - too many hickies.
Really? It seems to be working fine for me. What issues have you encountered?

[Judy G. Russell]

Really? It seems to be working fine for me. What issues have you encountered?Same here -- no problems with Eset at all.

[davidh]

I think that it should be pointed out that AVG 8 Search Shield does LIVE scans of the web sites that appear on a search results web page (e.g. google search results).

This can be checked by passing the mouse pointer over the "evaluation" icon displayed by AVG next to each entry in the given search results. The "balloon" that pops up displays the length of time taken to do the scan and the time when the scan was done (e.g. "right now").

As pointed out elsewhere in this thread these scans may be slow. However, one does NOT need to wait for the scans to complete to go to the web site. If one does not want to wait for the scan to complete, one can just click on the link offered up by google.

To me, the fact that these scans are somewhat slow seems to indicate that the scans may be rather thorough. Since legitimate web sites are often attacked AND infected, this seems to be a reasonable trade-off. Of course , if one so wishes, one may easily disable this "extra" security feature.

DH

[Peter Creasey]

if one so wishes, one may easily disable this "extra" security feature.

David, I'm told that turning off certain features e.g. the link scan turns the AVG icon in the systray gray.

[davidh]

David, I'm told that turning off certain features e.g. the link scan turns the AVG icon in the systray gray.
Yes, I tried that. It does turn grey and an exclamation point appears on the icon too.

However, I do not see any good reason to turn it off.

The effect of turning it on that you will see visibly "in your face" is the appearance of the colored icons next to each result that appears in the output from your google, yahoo, etc. searches. The icons will remain animated until the live scans of the corresponding web pages are complete, however you should not need to wait until the scans are complete to actually click the link and "go there". So as far as I can see it's merely a cosmetic issue no much of a performance issue.

Furthermore I do not see why one would NOT WANT THE LIVE SCANS in a day and age when virus scanning ALONE is probably less than 70% effective.

I read the Internet Storm Center news feeds almost every day and the security experts continually recommend a multilayered defense. It seems to me that one ought to have a well thought out reason for "putting all the eggs in one basket".

If one religiously scans one's computer to guarantee that both Windows and all other apps which might be fired up by a browser are fully patched up to date, then one might have a somewhat plausible reason to turn off the Search Shield.

I also leave my Search Shield / Link Scan turned on since I figure I sort of owe it to AVG for giving me a free AV and by leaving the feature turned on I am helping them to find infected web sites to add to their database (since their protection is based on both LIVE scanning and on a database).

David H.

[ndebord]

Dan, was that a full vote of confidence for Avira? I'm losing confidence in Eset with their v.3 - too many hickies. (2.6 is still supported, and works well, with their sort-of-antispyware all-in-one engine architecture.)

My buddies are having a raft of little problems with AVG8 and Firefox.

There's a lot of interest in a lighteweight solution for responsible adults (when terrorists, mass murderers and teenage boys are not going to be using one's computers).


Frank,

AVG 7.5 will work until December 31, 2008. Having had issues with AVG 8, I reverted to the old, stable version and am out there looking somewhere else for a replacement. BTW, what issues did AVG 8 have Firefox?

[fhaber]

>What issues have you encountered?

Permissions problems on a couple of laptops that join and unjoin from several domains regularly.

[ndebord]

>What issues have you encountered?

Permissions problems on a couple of laptops that join and unjoin from several domains regularly.

Frank,

So that would probably be the spyware part of the new AVG 8 suite?

[fhaber]

>So that would probably be the spyware part of the new AVG 8 suite?

Nope, I just tried the Free, AV only.

[jdh]

>So that would probably be the spyware part of the new AVG 8 suite?

Nope, I just tried the Free, AV only.

Talking now about Eset or AVG 8?

I only know AVG Free and AVG 8 Free enables anti-spy BY DEFAULT upon installation. Maybe it will turn off anti-spy after 30 days or so? But I did not read any such notice. The 30 day limit on free resident AVG anti-spy was on AVG anti-spy 7.5, I think.

DH

[Mike]

OIC. I've not dealt with that. My home machines are in a workgroup so they can share files, but I don't deal with a domain.

Interesting; Eset markets to businesses, so I'd think the company would want that to work correctly.

Which Win are you running on those machines?

[fhaber]

Don't remember now whether I turned it off. It's uninstalled now; can't check.

[fhaber]

XP Pro, with admin login to two companies. NOD32 2.6 never caused me these problems.

[Mike]

Eset added a lot more (firewall-type) network checking to NOD32 v3. I wonder if some of the local Windows network traffic is getting filtered. <shrug>

[fhaber]

>network traffic is getting filtered

No doubt. My memory is fading already, but after I'd excluded the client's database directory (Paradox and .mdb), and got that to work, I fiddled with permissions for a couple of hours to get my admin tools to work. Then I grabbed AVG with relief, and got relief.

This was last fall, early v3 days. Perhaps it's better now.

[Mike]

Mine claims to be 3.0.621.0.

[ndebord]

Talking now about Eset or AVG 8?

I only know AVG Free and AVG 8 Free enables anti-spy BY DEFAULT upon installation. Maybe it will turn off anti-spy after 30 days or so? But I did not read any such notice. The 30 day limit on free resident AVG anti-spy was on AVG anti-spy 7.5, I think.

DH


David,

Well, finally a clarification on AVG 7.5 Although they said many things about when it was to die and did promise support through the end of the year, it appears that they've decided to kill it off at the end of August.

"Support for AVG 7.5 Free Edition is planned to end on 31st August 2008.

No more virus updates are planned for after that date.

Note that no more 'program' updates are due! Only virus updates will continue until the end date.

AVG 7.5 Paid version will be supported until 31/12/08."


http://freeforum.avg.com/read.php?13,136697,backpage=,sv=

[davidh]

I already switched to AVG 8 on XP and Avast on Win 98 so I'm "good to go" so far.

DH

[ndebord]

I already switched to AVG 8 on XP and Avast on Win 98 so I'm "good to go" so far.

DH


David,

Why did you switch to AVG8? I ask as I was less than thrilled with it a short time ago. Sluggish and problems with the email scanner part.

[davidh]

David,

Why did you switch to AVG8? I ask as I was less than thrilled with it a short time ago. Sluggish and problems with the email scanner part.
I stayed with AVG8 on Win XP because I was used to AVG7.5.

The free resident anti-Spy and the additional browser security seemed to be pluses too.

The only "problem" I've had so far is that the browser security plug ins were slow to be made compatible with updates to FF 3.0. But since I have Finjan, Firekeeper, SiteAdvisor, & NoScript security plugins too it was only a minor thing to me.

I had to switch from AVG 7.5 on Win 98 to Avast because AVG8 don't run on Win98

[ndebord]

I stayed with AVG8 on Win XP because I was used to AVG7.5.

The free resident anti-Spy and the additional browser security seemed to be pluses too.

The only "problem" I've had so far is that the browser security plug ins were slow to be made compatible with updates to FF 3.0. But since I have Finjan, Firekeeper, SiteAdvisor, & NoScript security plugins too it was only a minor thing to me.

I had to switch from AVG 7.5 on Win 98 to Avast because AVG8 don't run on Win98

David,

That's funny about sticking with AVG8 because you like AVG7.5. That was precisely why I am looking for alternatives. I don't like 8. I hear they've worked on it in a couple of recent bug fix releases, so perhaps I'll look again, but I'm leaning towards AntiVir right now.

[davidh]

David,

That's funny about sticking with AVG8 because you like AVG7.5. That was precisely why I am looking for alternatives. I don't like 8. I hear they've worked on it in a couple of recent bug fix releases, so perhaps I'll look again, but I'm leaning towards AntiVir right now.
It wasn't a matter of liking or not liking AVG 7.5.
I used to use F-prot on Windows 95 and 98 until they stopped the free version long time ago. Then switched to AVG because it was free and still worked on Win 95 PC which I still use sometimes. I just never bothered to "shop" around 'til I was forced to.

DH

[ndebord]

It wasn't a matter of liking or not liking AVG 7.5.
I used to use F-prot on Windows 95 and 98 until they stopped the free version long time ago. Then switched to AVG because it was free and still worked on Win 95 PC which I still use sometimes. I just never bothered to "shop" around 'til I was forced to.

DH

David,

Similar feelings and experiences. I too used F-Prot for DOS, then windows. Paid for NAV, then Trend Micro, but AVG was better and so I stayed with it until now.

[fhaber]

I'm in pilgrim mode like you currently, running Avira, Avast! and AVG 8 on different computers and seeing which I hate least. I may wind up paying and trying one of these, or NOD32 again. Some of the free-versions have really big, REALLY RED popup sales pitches on every update. Couple that with slow servers, like AVGs early days, and it's enough to make you shell out. I keep up the quest for for the sake of my terminally cheap clients, and for the joy of it.

[ndebord]

I'm in pilgrim mode like you currently, running Avira, Avast! and AVG 8 on different computers and seeing which I hate least. I may wind up paying and trying one of these, or NOD32 again. Some of the free-versions have really big, REALLY RED popup sales pitches on every update. Couple that with slow servers, like AVGs early days, and it's enough to make you shell out. I keep up the quest for for the sake of my terminally cheap clients, and for the joy of it.

Frank,

Duane White over at CIS's anti-virus forum, has come around to like AVG8, in its latest bugfix version (8.1 I believe??). I may return to it. I too found teh red popups irritating in AntiVir and Avast. Don't really know where else to look. All the newbies out there have not passed the smell test that Duane provides. Down the road, maybe, but not yet. NOD32 has good word of mouth here and elsewhere. Perhaps.

I may try reinstalling AVG8's latest iteration at the end of the month to see if I like it better this time around. (Completely indecisive here.)

<SIGH>

[Peter Creasey]

AVG8, in its latest bugfix version (8.1

N, Am I recalling correctly that to get a later version like 8.1 I would have to uninstall the prior version then install 8.1?

[ndebord]

N, Am I recalling correctly that to get a later version like 8.1 I would have to uninstall the prior version then install 8.1?


Peter,

I don't know as I removed the earlier version from my HD after hating it a lot. Duane would know though as he said he has installed it a lot on client's machines.

[earler]

The following procedure is to remove the nagging to upgrade avg 8:

Follow the below steps to disable the appearance of the irritating AVG 8 notification area:
1. Open Notepad or another plain text editor.
2. Copy and paste the following three lines from this page into the text editor:
@echo off
ren avgmwdef_us.mht avgmwdef_us.mht.bak
ren avgresf.dll avgresf.dll.bak
3. Save the text document containing the above three lines in the location where AVG 8 is installed. By default, this will be C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG8. Save the file as something like “AVGNotifyOff.bat”, without the quotes. It really doesn’t matter how you name the file, so long as you can identify it, and it ends in the “.bat” extension, so Windows sees it as a batch file.
4. Once the file’s saved, close the text editor, navigate in Windows Explorer or My Computer to C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG8, locate the batch file document you saved in step 3 above, and you should be able to run the file by pressing and releasing the Enter key. All the batch file does is rename two files with a “.bak” (backup) extension, so the files are still there, it’s just that AVG can’t see them any more, and you should find that the bottom line of the AVG user interface window no longer displays the “Hide notification, button” item.