From Wendell's recommendation a while back, I purchased Avast. I have had it for about 2 years now.
I know lately Wendell dropped Avast and went with Windows Defender.
A couple of months ago, my Trimble Business Center would crash during the "import" function of data collector files.
I finally figured out it was Avast. I had to disable my internet connection, and disable Avast for 10 minutes till I imported my data collector, then re-enable the internet connection and Avast to protect myself while downloading CORS data.
Two days ago, my Google Earth would not function.
I reinstalled it, still no-go.
Today a brain flash, disable the Avast and try again.
It worked. I know there are settings and toggles to allow Avast to use or "allow" files. I tried some of that without resolution. Most of that is over my head. I find it easier to toggle off the internet connection and AV software for a few minutes.
If I hadn't already paid for Avast, for three computers, for three years, I might switch to something else.
I had been using Avast on all of the computers in the house and office for several years. My Vista laptop did not seem to like it very much, and for some reason, I always had something that would not stay turned on.
I finally took the advice of someone on this forum, and downloaded Security Essentials. Things seem to be running much better now. I have switched to SE on my laptop, my wife's laptop, my daughter's netbook, and my inherited netbook. I inherted the netbook when on of my daughters got a new laptop for Christmas.
I use the netbook for basic web browsing and light word processing, research, etc,. where I don't need CAD. It lets me keep it in the house, and the bigger laptop in the office.
I had Avast for a quite a few years and a couple of viruses still got through. They were viruses that were out there before AVAST Kapersky etc. could get them identified in their daily updates. It seems like a never ending battle between the hackers and virus security providers. I finally went with McAfee Internet Security and also their Tech services @ $300/year. I get a virus and they log on to my computer, find it, kill it and add it to their database. They just did a update to their security features and gave me a free added yearly services. I love the way they log on, find it, kill it, fix the registry and update my system...so far it's been nearly 6 months without a problem.
Pablo B-)
When Avast wasn't so popular, it was really good software and you got a lot of features for free. For quite awhile, they had the highest positive detection rate of any other AV software, even the commercial products. As they got more popular, it got more bloated and thus caused more problems. But it still was pretty good among both free and commercial versions. But it was the lack of support I received when they were erroneously reporting many of my own websites and the websites of some of my clients as infected. It took literally 3 months to get the last of the false positive URLs cleaned out of their database.
I would submit support tickets and never get a response. I was a reseller and had purchased many seats for many years for myself, family and friends, so you would think I'd get good support. I resorted to using their generic contact form when support tickets went unanswered and even that was hit or miss. When they did respond, they were cocky and claimed that it was my fault. After I proved to them that they were wrong with documentation and server reports, they would go quiet. When they finally surfaced, they said they were using bad reports that they themselves had generated due to a fault of their own in the detection software. Never an apology, never an offer to try to make things right somehow. The overall feeling I got from them was "oh well".
So I dropped my reseller account, uninstalled every license of Avast I had and installed Microsoft Security Essentials as a replacement in all cases. It's been several months now and not one problem with any of the installs. And MSSE is free, so you aren't really losing anything by switching. Also, it is updated automatically as part of Windows Update.
Try some of the free ones, AVG, Malwarebytes, cccleaner, Check download.com for reviews
> Try some of the free ones, AVG, Malwarebytes, cccleaner, Check download.com for reviews
Just keep in mind that the software you mention do different things. Antivirus software such as AVG detects viruses. Some do also detect malware but they mainly concentrate on viruses. Malwarebytes detects malware, such as adware and other non-virus malicious items. CCleaner performs housekeeping on your computer, which means it might just happen to remove some bad things, but likely not everything.
These are all great products, but you don't just want one of the three you listed, you want all of them. That said, you don't want two antivirus programs installed at the same time because they'll conflict and often detect false positives because of said conflict.
When someone asks me to put them on what I call a maintenance plan, I install the following:
Then I instruct them to run Windows Update first, then run the programs above in that order once every week or so, making sure they are all updated first (hence Windows Update and Update Checker as the first items).
One thing to keep in mind with free software such as those listed above: They are free and as such may have options presented during setup that install other software or change browser settings on your computer; so pay attention when installing them and make sure not to let them install extra stuff. They often make deals with other companies that help them fund the software they are providing for free. A great example is Skype -- when you install it, it has checkboxes to set your browser's homepage to Bing, which are checked by default -- I recommend you uncheck them. It doesn't mean the software is bad, it just means that you may have to jump some hurdles when using free software.
I've recently found new respect for McAfee. They were much like Norton (which is absolutely horrible, horrible software) for many, many years. But recently I had a client who's hosting account had been infected with a virus, then removed, but McAfee still reported it as infected. Neither my client nor I have McAfee software (the infection was reported to him by one of his clients). I wrote to McAfee asking them to review the issue -- I got a response within an hour from a representative in the United States who said they had corrected the issue and it would go out in the next database update. Now that's customer support and I'm not even a customer.
I used Avast for a few years and was very happy with what it did.
Then it updated and took on a whole new agenda.
It started a phase that it would quarantine files without allowing me to decide if it was a good file to have and was zapping needed files on its own.
The files that it would attack and destroy were the propitiatory files that would contact their developer by internet and authenticate itself and those that would automatically connect to an internet link to fetch data.
That forced me to do a recovery on my main computer to an earlier date to get it going again and then removing Avast completely from all my computers.
I use Microsoft Defender and Security Essentials and will give my systems a dose of MalwareBytes and SuperAntiSpyWare regularly.
😉
