Best AV for home NT?

[John Brock]

I will soon be loading a copy of WinNT WS 4.0 on an old Pentium
clunker, which is to be given to an impoverished FOAF. What would
be a good AV solution? Current Norton and McAfee products would
seem to be out, as they do not list NT as a supported OS (or does
that matter?). So what options does my friend's friend have?

1) Pick up a copy of Norton 2002 (which does support NT) on eBay.

2) Buy a second tier retail AV product. I have WinCleaner Anti-Virus
running on an old 486 NT machine. Is that any good? Poking around
just a little I ran into CA's eTrust EZ Antivirus. Big company
trying to move into new market? So is it worth buying? Any other
retail suggestions besides these?

3) A free AV product. I didn't even know such things existed until
I looked at this newsgroup. So what are the pro's and con's? Are
they up to the same standards as the commercial products? Are they
for Linux type hackers, or can they be used by clueless home users?
And which would be best for NT?

Since it's such an old machine it would be good if the software's
footprint were as small as possible. And it would be nice if it
were easy to use, and if we could count on signature updates being
available for at least a few years. Oh yes, and it would be good
if it actually worked. So with that in mind, what are your
suggestions? (Pointers to useful web sites would also be much
appreciated!)

 

[Duane Arnold]

(e-mail address removed) (John Brock) wrote in @panix3.panix.com:

I will soon be loading a copy of WinNT WS 4.0 on an old Pentium
clunker, which is to be given to an impoverished FOAF. What would
be a good AV solution? Current Norton and McAfee products would
seem to be out, as they do not list NT as a supported OS (or does
that matter?). So what options does my friend's friend have?

1) Pick up a copy of Norton 2002 (which does support NT) on eBay.

2) Buy a second tier retail AV product. I have WinCleaner Anti-Virus
running on an old 486 NT machine. Is that any good? Poking around
just a little I ran into CA's eTrust EZ Antivirus. Big company
trying to move into new market? So is it worth buying? Any other
retail suggestions besides these?

3) A free AV product. I didn't even know such things existed until
I looked at this newsgroup. So what are the pro's and con's? Are
they up to the same standards as the commercial products? Are they
for Linux type hackers, or can they be used by clueless home users?
And which would be best for NT?

Since it's such an old machine it would be good if the software's
footprint were as small as possible. And it would be nice if it
were easy to use, and if we could count on signature updates being
available for at least a few years. Oh yes, and it would be good
if it actually worked. So with that in mind, what are your
suggestions? (Pointers to useful web sites would also be much
appreciated!)

http://www.nod32.com/home/home.htm

Duane

 

[Shane]

3) A free AV product. I didn't even know such things existed until
I looked at this newsgroup. So what are the pro's and con's? Are
they up to the same standards as the commercial products? Are they
for Linux type hackers, or can they be used by clueless home users?
And which would be best for NT?

Since it's such an old machine it would be good if the software's
footprint were as small as possible. And it would be nice if it
were easy to use, and if we could count on signature updates being
available for at least a few years. Oh yes, and it would be good
if it actually worked. So with that in mind, what are your
suggestions? (Pointers to useful web sites would also be much
appreciated!)

AVG6 free edition works fine on NT4. I can say I like it and find it
perfectly adequate and someone else will say why they disagree. I think
they're raving and they'll think I am. BTW I recommend the free Sygate
Personal Firewall for NT4 also - and iirc is the only one of the decent
software firewalls that still supports it.

http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_dwnl_free.php

http://www.sygate.com/free/spf_download.htm

Shane

 

[Shane]

Actually, Sygate PF is the one that still supportsWin95 - thus when dual
booting the two I had SPF on NT4.


Shane