Agreed. Aside from antivirus, I also use Malwarebytes and SuperAntiSpyware (horrible name, but I've heard good things about it).Originally Posted by trjp
I had a partial infection by that fake antivirus some years ago too and in my case, the antivirus I was using (I don't remember if it was Avast or Avira at the time) also wasn't of much help.
I've removed dozens of those hijackware "you have a virus - pay me to remove it" things from PCs - some were just nagging, some had basically taken over the entire PC and wouldn't let you use anything at all.
In all cases the PCs had a proper AV (Norton, Kaspersky or McAfee) and in all cases the AV didn't care because the 'malware' wasn't trying to steal keypresses or hijack the network or harm files - e.g. it wasn't a virus and so they just sat there doing nowt.
I'm so good at removing those I talked a total PC novice (my other half) through doing on in 2-3 mins on the phone once - but it's gauling that this happens on PCs people have paid money to protect.
I despise PC 'security' firms - they're selling fear and snake oil for that fear - it's over the borderline dishonesty.
There was a case in the US recently where a PC 'consultant' (a guy in a computer shop) convinced a man that his PC was under attack from people who were trying to track him down to kill him - the man paid millions of dollars to this guy to protect him and the FBI arrested him as he was packing to leggit. He was charged with fraud and allsorts but he didn't do anything that the anti-virus industry doesn't do - which is overcharge for protecting you against a greatly overstated threat with no guarantee of success and no comeback if it fails :)
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As a person who has repaired a dozens of PC's due to viruses, malware and other goodies, even though all they did was read e-mails, I'd say running a PC without AV is a very high security risk. You will never know when something hit you (even if you do so called "safe" stuff only, there still a change) before it's too late. At minimum, have MSE (Win 7) or Windows Defender (Win 8) up & running.
Now, about the so called performance. Yes, Kaspersky does use a lot of resources, but there are exceptions in the AV world. For example, I use ESET Smart Security, even have bought a 1 year license for about 30€. And I have not regret buying it. Anyway, I use real-time scanner and other real time stuff and I have to say, besides a bit of waiting (for AV to finish scanning) after some downloads, I have not encountered any performance hits at all when gaming or doing other activities. Probably you will have problems when playing and downloading at the same time, but then again, should you really do that?
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Does anyone know what MSE's real time protection does? Does it only check installs and downloads or does it check programs you run too? In the past, you often got problems with antivirus slowing games down and such and I'm wondering if this is a problem with MSE too.
......what?
In my experience, it scans files downloaded, when you open a folder it scans the contents of the folder, etc etc. Doesn't seem to interfere with games in any way though.
Thanks. That was my impression too. I just remember AV from the late nineties that scanned everything every time something was loaded. That could really slow games down.
I have a lot of slow downs in Far Cry 2, so I wondered if MSE might be a factor, but it's probably something else.
All AV products will 'slow' your PC to some extend - they will scan many types of files before they're loaded etc. - this is why I tend to tell people - esp people with older PCs - that a good way to speed-up their system is to ditch their AV (and engage their common-sense).
Most of MSE's work is done at startup tho - system startup and first-time program launches thereafter. A good way to eliminate an AV as your source of performance issues is to run a game - play for a bit - quit - re-run it. The 2nd time the AV won't do anything (unless the game modifies it's own files for some reason) and so if it's still slow - it's not your AV
The other way to diagnose this is to use the Windows Performance doodah and see is the MSE processes are using CPU ofc.
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I've always tended to turn real-time protection off in AV and only used their on-demand scanners for the same reason.
yeah, it likely isn't then. I've played FC2 for 41 hours in a few days and have started and restarted it a lot of times. It doesn't seem to have made any difference. If anything, the game seems to run slightly better right after I start it.Most of MSE's work is done at startup tho - system startup and first-time program launches thereafter. A good way to eliminate an AV as your source of performance issues is to run a game - play for a bit - quit - re-run it. The 2nd time the AV won't do anything (unless the game modifies it's own files for some reason) and so if it's still slow - it's not your AV
It's just odd because I played it on my now dead desktop, which was less powerful than my current laptop, and it ran better back then. The desktop had less RAM, less video RAM and a generally less powerful GPU. What it did have was fast HDs, while the laptop only has a 5400rpm HD, but still, Skyrim must be doing a lot of loading too and I didn't have these FPS drops when I played it on this same laptop.
I don't know. I can't see any pattern to the slow downs in FC2. It seems very random. Setting everything to low or off in the graphics settings hasn't really helped much either.
Maybe a good idea in general in case there's something else that is eating resources.The other way to diagnose this is to use the Windows Performance doodah and see is the MSE processes are using CPU ofc.
Thanks.
Of course, now that I'd posted about the slow downs in Far Cry 2 during the 41 hours I'd played it, I played for six hours more today and finished the game. During those final six hours the game ran perfectly fine with no slowdowns at all.
I have no idea what is going on...
You invoked Sod's Law...
I bought a snow shovel last week - there will be no snow in the North East of England this decade.
I will be buying a brollie tomorrow - prepare for the summer! :)
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hehe. It does remind me of when I made graphics at a TV station; it happened improbably often that the computers worked perfectly when I was the only one who used them. When I had to show the graphics to the person I'd made them for, something went wrong, and when I then wanted to show the problem to a colleague so we could figure out how to fix it, it worked perfectly again.
I've had avast for so long that i'm reluctant to ditch it. I rarely do anything dodgy these days, but I have had 2-3 alerts just for browsing to relatively benign looking websites. Usually for something javascripty hidden in an iframe or ad.
There's been a lot of stories about bot-nets and people using other PCs to send malicious emails recently, so I'm reluctant to go completely unprotected. When I get around to upgrading to win8 I might just go with the built in MSE, but on the other hand, it seems to present a bigger target to use the same AV that everyone else will be using... in the same way that Windows presents a bigger target than mac/linux.
In recent years people say malware and spyware are more of a threat, but in 5+ years of running spybot/etc.. I can't say they've ever found anything other than a few doubleclick cookies.
I'm interested in all these people who go without AV because they browse sensibly - what's your solution if you come across a compromised website? I think every time my AV has thrown a fit is because a website I "knew" was safe had been attacked and was trying to do all sorts of naughty things.
"Swans are so big, they're like the Ostriches of the bird world"
Because it hasn't happened yet, it won't happen in the future.
I can't remember which logical fallacy it is, but it's certainly one of them!
i would say avast
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