[pbuckne]

First of all, I would like to add a disclaimer. No antivirus is perfect. Secondly, the question. Have any of you tried AVG (www.grisoft.com)? If so, what did/do you think?

The reason that I ask is that I have successfully used it to clean numerous viruses, and have run it alongside McAfee to compliment the retail antivirus.

[Sampson]

I use it. I ran their free version for months. Then, I bought the pro edition. I've never had a problem. It has intercepted numerous email virus'; infected diskettes, and one that was on a CD installation. I like it because it is just that, an anti-virus.

Many people like McAfee. I don't. It buries itself throughout your registry. It conflicts with certain programs. In other words - too intrusive. It is the devil to uninstall.

Norton's has gotten better, but like its System Works, it overreaches. It too seems to intrude itself and there was a time when it was a real memory hog.

Just my opinion.

[GTwannabe]

I'm a fan of Norton Antivirus Corporate, but I also use AVG Pro on some machines at work. Good program, but the interface is kinda clunky. It's a pretty simple install/uninstall and isn't as likely to have its installation broken as Norton (although Norton has helpful support links on their page for when this happens.)

Avoid Mcafee like the plague! We have a $60,000 site license for it at work, and it's on every machine (except the ones in my office, we have Norton and AVG ) Program is so bloated, Mcafee defaults it to only scan EXE, COM, and DLL extensions by default to prevent bogging down the system. It always misses stuff, then the user does a manual scan and finds dozens of viruses. Try to clean it and Mcafee says "unable to clean infected file... leaving alone." Doesn't quarantine it or anything! It's also a nightmare to uninstall. Registry keys and DLL's left all over the place.

[clutch]

GT, what version are you using? I use 4.5.1 (the latest corp version) and I don't have any problems with it. I also use their scanner on our Exchange server and Netshield on our servers. I manage all of them with ePolicy Orchestrator with very little fuss.

[pbuckne]

Glad to hear a lot of other folks are using it. I used to work corporate, and they also had a site license for McAfee, saw it miss a lot of stuff as well. Now I manage a computer shop, lot less customers, but I think the intelligence level went down, if that is possible.

Anyway, I have seen problems with both Norton and McAfee, lately I have seen McAfee stalling machines (win9x)during bootup, chokes during the scan and dies.

You all use any other virus removal tools? There is a neat little one from Panda (yes, Panda) that I used just yesterday to clear remnants of sircam.

[GTwannabe]

The older 95/98 machines have Mcafee 4.0, and they have the worst problems. Some of the newer 98 and 2000 machines have 5.0, and that's slightly better. The 2000 lab machines got the 4.51 corporate, and that one actually works halfway decent.

Unfortunately, I'm not in charge of what software gets installed where... I just fix it when it breaks.

[clutch]

It's hard to blame an entire product line when you are using an older version of their products. If you plan on warning people away from something, at least mention something like "currently we are using an older version that is having problems, and we haven't upgraded either the product or the OS that it's running on" as that is the situation you just described. Also, support for versions before 4.5x has been phased out in the newest SuperDAT files, and therefore you will not get the engine updates needed to support the current DAT files. So, it would seem that your problems are due to retaining out-of-date software, rather than the software itself.

[Immortal]

U guys seem only to be usin McAfee and AVG. What about Sophos? I have used my copy since i had NT all those years ago, and it hasnt let me down once! Most of the PC's in the University that my friend works in use it, so it must be good. Ive used Mcafee as well, but im much happier with Sophos Sweep for NT.
Thats Just my opinion

[pbuckne]

Hey, I am interested in all kinds of virus riddance. Where do you get/try Sophos?

Also, if you boot into MSDOS mode in 9x, you can scan from there with AVG (c:\progra~1\grisoft\avg6\avg), does Sophos or any other distribution offer that support? I have had to scan an infected drive with three different distributions before it is entirely clean.

[Immortal]

Yeah Sophos does support cleaning a virus from DOS (say if u got a virus and you cant boot into windows, it does it from DOS, its small enough to fit on floppy!). Go on their site (www.sophos.com) and try the evaluation. Sophos Sweep for NT is a great anti-virus for WinNT/2k/XP, and i bet they have something for win9x/ME. Go and see!!!
The Inter-Check monitor that comes with it is a great thing. It tells you that you may have a virus and leaves it to you to deal with it, using the actual Sweep for NT program. Saved me from countless trojans!!!
Its definetly one of the best Ant-Virus programs ive worked with, and it doesnt use up too much resources (less than 1% CPU on the slowest pc we got, 133mhz).
Go try Norton Anti-Virus too, thats pretty good aswell.

[sapiens74]

McAfee sucks hard

I have used thier Corporate Edition, and Nortons for about 4 years now.

We managed 600 Machines with Norton and we avoided being hit by most of the big Viruses. McAfee is about as intuitive as Linux, but for home use I really Like Norton. I am biased of course, and itfwhat your using does what you need, then stick with it.

[clutch]

Quote:

McAfee sucks hard...

I am biased of course, and itfwhat your using does what you need, then stick with it.

LOL

That's a little more than normal "bias", but then again I think that everything made by Norton/Symantec is completely bloated and designed to get into everything on your system (and consequently trash it if you put on the "wrong" update or service pack). So I guess I am "biased" as well...;)

Some of the other AV platforms here sound interesting, but how is the centralized management of them (or is there even such a thing for them)? I might poke around a bit at Sophos just to see what it's about.

[Brian Frank]

The only thing I will use from Norton/Symantec is their AntiVirus (which isn't as bloated as it used to be) and their Firewall (comes with Norton Internet Security package). I refuse to buy or even test anything else. Crashguard? More like Crashmaker, IMO. The AV is great and I really don't see the need to get something else.

[sapiens74]

I will say thier Home AV is a bit bloated.

I still like it tho

Thier Corp AV is the best around hands down.

THier centralized control makes putting out virus wildfires a lot easier.

[Brian Frank]

I don't have anything slower than 800MHz here--in fact that's the slowest any PC has in CPU speed (all default speeds) so I don't think the bloat issue is a big of a deal as it was with 133MHz CPU's. That's my opinion anyway...

[sapiens74]

IT is when your Minimum specs in your company for the average PC is 500MHZ with 128MB of ram. Our Cad guys could run every known AV and be ok with thier machines, but its the average user that needs every last bit of power.