I'm looking for my missing piece, one that won't increase...

March 26, 2006 9:13 AM

Antivirus software on WinXP SP2: Finding the balance between something that will protect my computer and something that won't slow down my system or interfere with my working online.

What I guess might make me different from the average antivirus-advice-asker is that I would definitely prefer to err in favor of short-term convenience. I want full use of my CPU, and I want to be able to VPN, fileshare, or what have you without having to disable or delete the antivirus software in order to get it out of my way. And in fact, since that's been such a pain every time I've tried antivirus software, I haven't used any in years. Also, I work with my firewall down, because it prevents me from using VPN, which I'm using pretty much constantly. I've been operating this way for years, and have had no problems (that I know of, admittedly).

However, today I found that I have been infected with the Zodiak virus, causing Limewire to start automatically every time I boot up, even though it was not set to do so. So I went through the motions of removing the virus, and now I suppose I'm reluctantly ready to try something else, if there is something minimalist and infrequent in its operation. I am definitely not looking for something that hovers in the system tray and monitors my every move. Condescending cutesy little icons are also unwelcome, to the point that I would rather have to deal with a virus than see those things on my desktop.

posted by bingo to computers & internet (21 comments total)

AVG Free works fine, is not cute, and monitors none of your moves with the exception of the "open" system call. Even that is optional, if you feel like barebacking.

You can set it to perform a full disk scan at some obscene hour of the night, and then it gets out of your way. The autoupdate feature works, and is also free of charge.
posted by majick at 9:23 AM on March 26, 2006

I'ved use McAfee, for years. Haven't had a virus ever as a result and really don't notice any performance degredation.

Mileage, as always when it comes to performance, varies. Some will say it's awful and degrades performance significantly, others will say otherwise.

I've found Norton's AV to be a virus in itself.

AVG, as mentioned above, is also quite popular.

That said, there was a bug in McAfee a couple of weeks ago that apparently caused chaos for users who had auto-delete enabled. Since I didn't, I didn't suffer.
posted by juiceCake at 9:24 AM on March 26, 2006

I really like Trend Micro PC-Cillin Internet Security. It has a fairly minimal footprint, and it's easy to manage the firewall. The interface is pretty clean and intuitive, so I think you'll have an easy time poking holes for your VPN/other jazz. It does have some useless stuff in it, as all security packages do, but it's a quick job to disable the things you don't need. About your firewall, though, I don't ever suggest just "getting it out of the way". I work at my campus ISP, and let me tell you, that's a recipe for disaster. You can be infected by a trojan just by virtue of being physically connected to some networks.

By the way, second on the Norton thing. Avoid their products like the plague.
posted by Drunken_munky at 9:57 AM on March 26, 2006

I've experimented with NAV (2004-6, Corporate 6,7) AVG, Panda, Nod32, Kaspersky, and BitDefender, and PCillian suite.

I'm currently using BitDefender 9 Professional Plus, sans the spam guard.

I went with BitDefender after all that based mainly on how much ram the programs use when they're 'not' doing anything and how much CPU they use when the 'are' actively scanning.

Kaspersky was a little more efficient in the background, but tended to take forever doing active HD scans as it seemed to scan things in a way that caused the background engine to scan them, making it a somewhat recursive and inefficient process. Well, for whatever reason, it was nearly 100% CPU usage and took hours and hours to scan my HD, much longer than anything else.

BitDefender uses the second least ram as far as I could tell, and is easy to enable and disable for high performance gaming. Also, the way the firewall pops up from the taskbar, as opposed to in its own window, doesn't steal focus from full screen games causing them to cash as many firewalls do. Of course this may leave you wondering why you can't get online, so YMMV.

Oh, also BitDefender has hourly updates, which is probably overkill, but is reassuring none the less.

Only problem I've had with BitDefender is that the antivirus automatically plugs into Outlook, which means you have to turn it off if you're using inline outlook plugins like PGP to deal with incoming and outgoing mail encypting. (So I just turned PGP off, as I don't use it that often.) But I seem to remember that's a problem from some other firewall/antivirus programs as well.
posted by tiamat at 10:02 AM on March 26, 2006

scratch, PC-Cillin off my list. I'm pretty sure I actually settled on BitDefender before I got around to trying that one. (or its changed a lot, because it doesn't look familiar)
posted by tiamat at 10:06 AM on March 26, 2006

About your firewall, though, I don't ever suggest just "getting it out of the way". I work at my campus ISP, and let me tell you, that's a recipe for disaster.

As far as the built-in VP firewall goes, I simply can't connect to my VPN while it's up, and that's something I need to do a lot.
posted by bingo at 10:07 AM on March 26, 2006

I've been very happy with NOD32.

It's unobtrusive and seems less resource intensive than other software I've used in the past (Kaspersky, AVG, McAffee) I don't notice a performance hit if I leave it running while playing a game.

The makers have a bechmark of performance hits, though thats naturally not the best thing to look at for an impartial comparison.

Something that may deter you: Stuff flagged by heuristic detection is sent back to them for further analysis (which naturally has privacy implications), they are upfront about this and it is easy to turn off.
posted by Olli at 10:12 AM on March 26, 2006

BEST:
NOD 32

Pros:
Smallest footprint.
Heuristic.
Perfect record for detecting new threats.

Cons:
Installation requirements are invasive.*
GUI could use some work.

*You must register BEFORE you can install it on the Japanese version marketed by Canon (don't know about the English version). It demands full name, address, phone number and an accurate e-mail address to which it sends a code required during installation. While installing it I promised myself that I would never buy another Canon software product again but after using it I can think of no other anti-virus I would rather use. Hopefully the English version is not as invasive...

CAUTION:
Trend Micro (seems to have many false positives)

AVOID like the plague:
McAfee
Norton

On preview: Ditto what Olli said...
posted by cup at 10:28 AM on March 26, 2006

another vote for avg free ... and zone alarm free for firewall ... they work well on my xp sp2 system
posted by pyramid termite at 10:46 AM on March 26, 2006

No recommendation, but an anti-vote for Norton AntiVirus. Every new release gets more intrusive, demanding more and more control over my network and then getting parts wrong like the port blocker slowing down network connections 100x. The auto-updater fails regularly, too. It's gotten too complex.
posted by Nelson at 11:07 AM on March 26, 2006

Another anti-vote for Norton. Their "Internet Security" suite came on my wife's last Dell, and screwed things up from Day One. It finally prevented her from even running scandisk and defrag.

More than anything else, Norton drove her to buy a Mac.

AVG Free is a great program. You really don't even notice that it's there.
posted by words1 at 11:54 AM on March 26, 2006

I use PCCillin. Never had a problem, and it's footprint is pretty small. Trend Micro has added a lot of additional features to the product over the years (it used to be just anti-virus) and unlike it's primary competitors (McAfee and Symantec) overall machine performance and product reliability has not suffered.

If you want free though, stick with AVG. It's pretty damn good for the price. ;)
posted by purephase at 12:03 PM on March 26, 2006

I have been using the free home version of Avast! for a long time and I'm very happy with it. Quick updates, no fuss.
posted by Ferrari328 at 2:01 PM on March 26, 2006

I use Avast! Anti-Virus for my anti-virus needs (free). It's fairly unobtrusive (as soon as you turn off the antimated system tray icons), and behaves well with my laptop (1.6 GHz Pentium M w/ 512MB Ram). I used Panda, but it was resource intensive. I also liked NAV 2003 corporate, which was supplied free at school, it was unbotrusive and didn't take many resources. As far as I know, there are still updates for it.
posted by defcom1 at 2:23 PM on March 26, 2006

AVG at home, Sophos for business use. Another anti-Norton person here!
posted by rc55 at 3:32 PM on March 26, 2006

Yet another vote for AVG Free. But if you're currently running without any firewall protection at all and you've had trouble with software firewalls, I'd strongly recommend that you put the money saved on AV software towards a basic hardware firewall/router/modem unit.
posted by boosh at 5:55 PM on March 26, 2006

Another happy AVG user here, with another handful of well-earned shit to fling at Norton.

I'm also tipping that if you've been operating with no firewall or AV and just noticed a virus, a scan will reveal others.

Doing Windows file sharing over the Internet without involving a VPN is generally considered a pretty sure way to turn your PC into somebody else's zombie soldier.

You should be able to use your VPN through the inbuilt Windows XP firewall, if you just poke the right holes in it. What's your VPN setup?
posted by flabdablet at 7:11 PM on March 26, 2006

Yep AVG Free and Zone Alarm Free are a beautiful combo!
posted by Chuck Cheeze at 10:25 PM on March 26, 2006

AVG and ZoneAlarm here as well. Good stuff.
posted by geekyguy at 12:19 AM on March 27, 2006

My vote definitely goes for Eset's NOD32. If it means anything to you, NOD is actually written in assembly. My experiences with installing and administering it on dozens of PCs at two seperate small business over the past 3 years (not to mention on my personal computers) reflect that well. As for control and icons, you're totally set there--it's insanely configurable (and it doesn't try to be a firewall).

Also, in case some people don't know about them, av-test.org is a good source (the only?) for independent comparative information on the various av software out there.
posted by ryran at 11:12 AM on March 27, 2006

again: NOD32 is the fastest i've experienced
it's also rated the best in several places
and i have never had any issue with it
(and it never bothers you unnecessarily- that is, not unless you have/are about to get a virus/trojan)
posted by tysiva at 3:29 PM on March 29, 2006