Norton vx Avast(free)

[Buffalo]

Well, I uninstalled Norton Anti-Virus and installed Avast4.6 Home Edition
(free).
Amazingly, on a thorough scan, Avast found 6 items, 4 were virus\trojan, one was
spyware and one was Malware Name SME family.
I was totally amazed since I had just finished an up to date Virus scan with
Norton and it didn't pick up anything.

Wow, Avast really was something~!


Well, what Avast found were false positives.
4 were due to an online Panda scan I did a long time ago.
Another was rpg.voc from a game. (that was the DSME one)
The so-called spyware alert was reasonable, but one that I had seen before in
AdAware and decided to ignore.
BTW, is there a way select 'ignore' when Avast finds something that you don't
want it to find again?


And, talk about speed while scanning, Avast took a little over twice as long as
Norton to scan all my drives (both scanners were set to their most thorough
mode) (95min compared to 39min for Norton)

But, Avast uses aprox 2% less resources (71% compared to 69% when I check it)
than Norton.
Still, I'm gonna try it out for awhile.

Anyone out there that uses the same version of Avast have any recommended
settings?
Thanks.

PS: Haven't noticed any speedup on my system, (Win98SE,1.8GHz,768Ram) since
switching to Avast so far.
But, I have just started using it and I will put it through the ropes.

 

[What's in a Name?]

Well, I uninstalled Norton Anti-Virus and installed Avast4.6 Home
Edition (free).
Amazingly, on a thorough scan, Avast found 6 items, 4 were
virus\trojan, one was spyware and one was Malware Name SME
family. I was totally amazed since I had just finished an up to
date Virus scan with Norton and it didn't pick up anything.

Wow, Avast really was something~!


Well, what Avast found were false positives.
4 were due to an online Panda scan I did a long time ago.
Another was rpg.voc from a game. (that was the DSME one)
The so-called spyware alert was reasonable, but one that I had
seen before in AdAware and decided to ignore.
BTW, is there a way select 'ignore' when Avast finds something
that you don't want it to find again?


And, talk about speed while scanning, Avast took a little over
twice as long as Norton to scan all my drives (both scanners were
set to their most thorough mode) (95min compared to 39min for
Norton)

But, Avast uses aprox 2% less resources (71% compared to 69% when
I check it) than Norton.
Still, I'm gonna try it out for awhile.

Anyone out there that uses the same version of Avast have any
recommended settings?
Thanks.

PS: Haven't noticed any speedup on my system,
(Win98SE,1.8GHz,768Ram) since switching to Avast so far.
But, I have just started using it and I will put it through the
ropes.

I found AVG to be eaiser on my system than Avast but that CA's eTrust
to use less resources than AVG.
When I was using Avast I turned off the web shield which helped speed
it up a bit.(was having problems with avast+sygate firewall)
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[History Fan]

Did you format your hard drive before installing Avast? I ask because
Norton AV is almost impossible to totally remove from your system (and its
negative effects) without a clean erase of the hard drive. Also the fact
that you're using a very old operating system, Windows 98, may be a reason
Avast isn't operating as fast or efficient for you as it is for XP or 2000
users. Avast does a thorough scan of my 80GB hard drive in about 22
minutes.

 

[History Fan]

Just did another thorough scan with Avast, and it took 15 minutes, 24
seconds, including a scan of archives.

 

[Buffalo]

Did you format your hard drive before installing Avast? I ask because
Norton AV is almost impossible to totally remove from your system (and its
negative effects) without a clean erase of the hard drive. Also the fact
that you're using a very old operating system, Windows 98, may be a reason
Avast isn't operating as fast or efficient for you as it is for XP or 2000
users. Avast does a thorough scan of my 80GB hard drive in about 22
minutes.

No, I did not format my HDD. It would not be worth the time and effort
required just to see if Avast is really faster.
I really haven't heard that the remnants of Norton actually slow anything done
to a noticeable degree.
Still,there is an extra uninstall program from Norton that claims to get rid of
'almost, all of the remnants.
Possibly since I had Avast ask me what to do when it found a virus, this may
have increased the scan time.
I will run another thorough scan this morning, without interruption and see how
long it takes.
Thanks for your thoughts and input.

 

[Buffalo]

Just did another thorough scan with Avast, and it took 15 minutes, 24
seconds, including a scan of archives.

It all depends on the amount of data and the type of data on the HDD, not the
size of the HDD.
Now, if you installed Norton Anti-Virus and ran the same scan, it would be
interesting to see how long it took.
Thanks again for your input.

 

[Charlie]

Your experience is simply a typical outcome of running one scanner after
another one. How many trojans, worms, virus, malware etc are on your disk
now that Avast failed to find? One other consideration is that there is no
standard between AV product as to classification of "threat" programs,
files. What Norton may call "adware" Avast may deem as a "non-threat" and
vica-versa.

It is entirely likely that if you ran any other AV product immediately after
a scan with Avast that you would be equally "amazed" that Avast "missed some
malware files". It is a word game to a great degree.....

 

[Buffalo]

Your experience is simply a typical outcome of running one scanner after
another one. How many trojans, worms, virus, malware etc are on your disk
now that Avast failed to find?

I think you misread my post.
Basically all I said that Avast didn't find anything that was a threat on my PC.
I was being a little sarcastic about its findings.

One other consideration is that there is no
standard between AV product as to classification of "threat" programs,
files. What Norton may call "adware" Avast may deem as a "non-threat" and
vica-versa.

What you say about other AV products is very true.

It is entirely likely that if you ran any other AV product immediately after
a scan with Avast that you would be equally "amazed" that Avast "missed some
malware files". It is a word game to a great degree.....

I hear so much 'bashing' about Norton AV in this ng about how it really slows
down the PC and that it is slower than Avast.
I just redid a thorough virus scan on my PC with Avast.(with no interruptions,
this time)
Norton, yesterday before I uninstalled it, took 39min for as thorough a scan as
I could set it up for.
Avast took 83min doing a thorough scan.
Is there something I should change in the settings in Avast to speed this up?
Thanks

 

[Buffalo]

Just did another thorough scan with Avast, and it took 15 minutes, 24
seconds, including a scan of archives.

I just did another scan with Avast set to ,AFAIK, its most thorough settings.
C:\&D:\ - two 8GB drives with 8.6GB used--97,000 files--35min
E:\-8GB drive with 5.32GB used--53,000 files--18min
F:\-8GB drive with 2.27GB used--43,000 files--10min
G:\-25GB drive with 13.3GB used--10,000files--2min
H:\-25GB drive with 13.4GB used--5,000 files--14min
I:\-25GB drive with 9.45GB used--1,000files--4min
Total files scanned:210,000
Total size scanned:aprox 51GB

Norton did its most thorough scan on the same (yesterday before I installed it)
in 39min.
Is there something I need to change while using Avast?
Thanks

 

[Sir_George]

I think you misread my post.
Basically all I said that Avast didn't find anything that was a
threat on my PC. I was being a little sarcastic about its findings.


What you say about other AV products is very true.


I hear so much 'bashing' about Norton AV in this ng about how it
really slows down the PC and that it is slower than Avast.
I just redid a thorough virus scan on my PC with Avast.(with no
interruptions, this time)
Norton, yesterday before I uninstalled it, took 39min for as thorough
a scan as I could set it up for.
Avast took 83min doing a thorough scan.
Is there something I should change in the settings in Avast to speed
this up? Thanks

Buffalo,

I don't believe that "bashing" is an accurate term regarding Noton's
bloatware and its drain on system resources. The home version, I'm not
familiar with the corporate version, truly does use a larger percentage of
system resources than most any other AV program. The comparison mentioned in
these newsgroups between Norton (Symantec) and the competition is based on
the real-time monitoring aspect of the programs and their respective usage
of system resources, which is totally independent of an on-demand scan; i.e.
how long it takes to scan files on the hard drive and the amount of
resources consumed during that task.

 

[Charlie]

Yes the change you need to do to Avast is found in Add-Remove Programs!

--

Charlie

 

[Buffalo]

Buffalo,

I don't believe that "bashing" is an accurate term regarding Noton's
bloatware and its drain on system resources. The home version, I'm not
familiar with the corporate version, truly does use a larger percentage of
system resources than most any other AV program. The comparison mentioned in
these newsgroups between Norton (Symantec) and the competition is based on
the real-time monitoring aspect of the programs and their respective usage
of system resources, which is totally independent of an on-demand scan; i.e.
how long it takes to scan files on the hard drive and the amount of
resources consumed during that task.

I understand that.
I was also saying that I didn't notice any increase in the performance of my PC
after I uninstalled Norton and installed Avast(free).
I will keep trying.
However, when I did a 'quick' scan(Avast) of my system rather than a 'thorough'
scan(Avast) the time went from 83min down to just under 16min, even when I had
the option to scan archived files selected.
Thanks for your input.

 

[Buffalo]

Yes the change you need to do to Avast is found in Add-Remove Programs!

Not ready for that yet.

 

[Charlie]

OKAY!! J/K anyway......

--

Charlie

Not ready for that yet.

 

[Dave Cohen]

I understand that.
I was also saying that I didn't notice any increase in the performance of
my PC
after I uninstalled Norton and installed Avast(free).
I will keep trying.
However, when I did a 'quick' scan(Avast) of my system rather than a
'thorough'
scan(Avast) the time went from 83min down to just under 16min, even when I
had
the option to scan archived files selected.
Thanks for your input.

The suggestion made earlier concerning reformatting the hd is not applicable
to most of the newer pc's being sold.
They give you recovery cd(s) that put the machine back to what it was when
you purchased it with whatever trial av product it comes with. So unless you
build your own, get your own copy of winxp or happen to get a machine not
suffering from this restriction, reformatting is not particularly
attractive..
I took out nav 2002 and tried both avg and avast. Didn't notice any change
in performance, I like avast and stayed with it.
Dave Cohen

 

[Buffalo]

The suggestion made earlier concerning reformatting the hd is not applicable
to most of the newer pc's being sold.
They give you recovery cd(s) that put the machine back to what it was when
you purchased it with whatever trial av product it comes with. So unless you
build your own, get your own copy of winxp or happen to get a machine not
suffering from this restriction, reformatting is not particularly
attractive..
I took out nav 2002 and tried both avg and avast. Didn't notice any change
in performance, I like avast and stayed with it.
Dave Cohen

If you could use NAV for free, would you use it or not?

 

[Roger Wilco]

They give you recovery cd(s) that put the machine back to what it was when
you purchased it with whatever trial av product it comes with.

If it doesn't get you back to the way you were, it is not recovery.
Getting back to factory defaults is "restore" (as in restore defaults)
and you may lose whatever changes were made between then and now. The
best approach IMO is to use an installation tracking program when
installing new software - it tracks what files are created, and where,
and compares snapshots of before and after registry states giving you
the difference data on request. While it may not be comprehensive (I'm
not that familiar with its inner workings), it helps to keep a text file
of results for manual removal should the uninstall string be missing
from one part of the registry (making it not appear in add/remove
programs) of missing altogether along with the uninstall.exe.