Newbie question, please help: best anti-virus software ?

[Steve H.]

Hi all,
Can anyone give me some informed opinions on the best available (
to the home PC user ) antivirus software ? My PC repair friend sold me
Command Antivirus 4.81.1 and it has worked very well for me. However, it
did not detect some viruses that I accidentally downloaded in some antivirus
software files, of all things. To detect them, I had to use the freebie
Avast software.
Any help out there ? Thanks in advance for your time.
Steve

 

[Shirley Worrall]

Hi Steve,

Can anyone give me some informed opinions on the best available (
to the home PC user ) antivirus software ?

<snip>

I'm not sure that it's possible to identify an absolute "best", but in
recent years I've read good things here about Kaspersky and NOD32. I
used Kaspersky for 2 years but found it confusing to use, and so moved
to NOD32, with which I've been very happy (I'm now in my second year
with it). F-Prot is also highly thought of, and often recommended
here.

Best wishes,

 

[BoB]

Hi all,
Can anyone give me some informed opinions on the best available (
to the home PC user ) antivirus software ? My PC repair friend sold me
Command Antivirus 4.81.1 and it has worked very well for me. However, it
did not detect some viruses that I accidentally downloaded in some antivirus
software files, of all things. To detect them, I had to use the freebie
Avast software.
Any help out there ? Thanks in advance for your time.
Steve

Do you have a problem with freebies? Avast and AVG 'freebies' are
good AVs. Your PC repair friend is ill-informed on quality AVs
or a rip-off artist.

BoB

 

[optikl]

Hmmmmm.....are you certain?
How did you "accidentally" download viruses in AV software files? What did
Avast detect?
And what did you allow it to do? If you still have those files, I'd send
them to both Command and Avast for
confirmation.

 

[Steve H.]

By the way, I just notifed download.com that they had a virus in their
downloadable AV software.

 

[optikl]

The two viruses that I downloaded, by sheer accident, were called " Win95:
Matyas " by Avast Antivirus Home Edition. Not even Command or F-Prot
detected the viruses. Is Avast wrong ?

I don't know. And neither do you......yet. Unless, of course, you confirmed
this in some way.

The viruses were contained in Panda

Antivirus Titanium and Platinum and came off the download.com website.

That's what makes this all sort of suspicious. Not that it isn't possible.
A google on this virus turns up a Win98 Matyas at AVPE. It says it's memory
resident and parasitic and affects only the Win98 OS.
What OS do you have?
If an AV I was using alerted to a virus in the the files of another AV I had
on my system, I'd try to get confirmation before I did anything else.

 

[optikl]

By the way, I just notifed download.com that they had a virus in their
downloadable AV software.

I hope you notified them of all the facts. Making an accusation without
proof might prove to be embarrassing.