Virus checker

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Any subjective comments on various checkers? I’v e posted on another forum about XP stopping rather too often and putting up a BSOD. My wife thinks it might be a virus, but I have Mcafee, the latest installed, and it finds nothings. My son recommends Norton, but all I’ve ever found it useful for was slowing my computer down.
Anybody?

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Hmm. Interesting to see you live in Houston, Tasmania!!

Everyone has their own, often trenchant, views on antivirus packages, and thus you’ll get as many views as there are people.

Personally, at home, I’ve been quite happy with Norton Internet Security where the firewall is integrated (more or less) with the antivirus package. At work we use Sophos, Trend, and Network Associates (oops, now McAfee!) for (servers and workstations), Exchange servers, and Cluster servers, respectively.

From what you say about the problems you are experiencing you might find it useful to track down, download, and run
“Spybot – Search & Destroy”
and
“Ad-Aware”
which remove assorted nasties which are not always viruses. References everywhere, especially in this forum!

John

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Nope, Houston, Texas.

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Nope . According to your profile, you live in Houston Tasmania. Can’t find that on a map anwhere!

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Nope . According to your profile, you live in Houston Tasmania. Can’t find that on a map anwhere!

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Nope, Houston, Texas.

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Hmm. Interesting to see you live in Houston, Tasmania!!

Everyone has their own, often trenchant, views on antivirus packages, and thus you’ll get as many views as there are people.

Personally, at home, I’ve been quite happy with Norton Internet Security where the firewall is integrated (more or less) with the antivirus package. At work we use Sophos, Trend, and Network Associates (oops, now McAfee!) for (servers and workstations), Exchange servers, and Cluster servers, respectively.

From what you say about the problems you are experiencing you might find it useful to track down, download, and run
“Spybot – Search & Destroy”
and
“Ad-Aware”
which remove assorted nasties which are not always viruses. References everywhere, especially in this forum!

John

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Mcafee is known for being the root of problems. If you were to do a search here at the lounge on “Mcafee” you will see what I mean.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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OK, I’ll try Norton.

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You mentioned in your first post that Norton was “slowing your computer down”. I have certainly found that Norton System Works slows my system down if all of the startup options are enabled. But if you allow only the AV to run at startup (or if you purchase only NAV rather than System Works), then I think you will find that there is no slowdown at all.

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Exactly !!

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Exactly !!

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You mentioned in your first post that Norton was “slowing your computer down”. I have certainly found that Norton System Works slows my system down if all of the startup options are enabled. But if you allow only the AV to run at startup (or if you purchase only NAV rather than System Works), then I think you will find that there is no slowdown at all.

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OK, I’ll try Norton.

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Mcafee is known for being the root of problems. If you were to do a search here at the lounge on “Mcafee” you will see what I mean.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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I use NAV, but as JohnGray says, there are as many opinions as there are people. Do a search for virus in this & the Software forum & you’ll get many other opinions.

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I use NAV, but as JohnGray says, there are as many opinions as there are people. Do a search for virus in this & the Software forum & you’ll get many other opinions.

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In the short run, try the ActiveX-based Housecall scanner at http://housecall.antivirus.com/%5B/url%5D (use Internet Explorer or an IE-based browser; it does not work with Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox). It uses Trend Micro’s pattern files and might pick up something different.

As for products to purchase for real-time protection going forward, there are many companies in the game now. Personally I recommend PC-cillin, but I do legal work for Trend Micro so I may be biased.

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And I like F-Prot from FRISK software, which also has a real-time component and is reasonably priced. I’ve never had it let a virus slip onto my machine since back in the DOS days, and I haven’t found any software conflicts with it. It includes a scheduler, so that you can check for and download updates automatically, as well.

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And I like F-Prot from FRISK software, which also has a real-time component and is reasonably priced. I’ve never had it let a virus slip onto my machine since back in the DOS days, and I haven’t found any software conflicts with it. It includes a scheduler, so that you can check for and download updates automatically, as well.

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Thanks to all.

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Wel, I finally did and bought Norton. Ran the CD-Rom, did the before-installation check, passed it OK, started to install, message that it couldn’t, no error message. Now I’m waiting for Tech Support in 3-4 days. Glad I paid for speedy delivery.

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Did you first UNinstall McAfee before trying to install Norton?
IF so, try a second time to do the install?

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I can understand, sort of, why Norton doesn’t uninstall McAfee during the installation process. Can anyone explain, please, why Norton won’t uninstall an earlier version of itself? Doesn’t make sense to me-if anyone should know how to uninstall Norton it should be Norton, right?

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I can understand, sort of, why Norton doesn’t uninstall McAfee during the installation process. Can anyone explain, please, why Norton won’t uninstall an earlier version of itself? Doesn’t make sense to me-if anyone should know how to uninstall Norton it should be Norton, right?

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Did you first UNinstall McAfee before trying to install Norton?
IF so, try a second time to do the install?

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message that it couldn’t

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What was the message?

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[indent]

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message that it couldn’t

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What was the message?

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Wel, I finally did and bought Norton. Ran the CD-Rom, did the before-installation check, passed it OK, started to install, message that it couldn’t, no error message. Now I’m waiting for Tech Support in 3-4 days. Glad I paid for speedy delivery.

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Thanks to all.

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In the short run, try the ActiveX-based Housecall scanner at http://housecall.antivirus.com/%5B/url%5D (use Internet Explorer or an IE-based browser; it does not work with Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox). It uses Trend Micro’s pattern files and might pick up something different.

As for products to purchase for real-time protection going forward, there are many companies in the game now. Personally I recommend PC-cillin, but I do legal work for Trend Micro so I may be biased.

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