Vista and anti-virus

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I recently got a laptop that runs windows vista and thought i would ask what the best anti virus to use on it would be??

 

I love kaspersky as well, but lately I started using Avira Antivir. Great free anti-virus and does the job well. I remember reading about the the top free AV's out there and Avira was at the top of the list in terms of detections.

 

I tend to use Avast or AVG. Both work on vista.

 

I am with nugget, i have vista ultimate.....i use AVG and it works fine

 

Kaspersky 2009 and Norton security suite 2009 are probably are getting good reviews from customers especially latest Norton version which now lightweight and not a resource hog anymore.

 

My preference is Sophos AV. Linky.

 

I used Avast at the start, but my boss gave me a license for NOD32. Easy to install, lots of features and it seems to do the job ;) I used that on Vista x64.

 

Avast antivirus anytime

 

ESET Nod32 HERE

Marketing talk as follows:

"ESET delivers the fastest, most effective and most proactive antivirus software with spyware and malware protection to eliminate viruses, adware, worms, trojans and rootkits before they attack your system. Nobody does proactive protection better than ESET!"

 

EDIT: Wow this was a lot longer then I intended when I sat down. Sorry it goes off at a bit of a tangent.

My Default load (man I sound like I am tooling up for battle) is as follows
AV: Avg Anti virus - free well supported and if using version 8 disable the link scanner during the installation.

Firewall: Comodo. Free light weight and very powerful, becareful with the defense+ part of the product as you can disable things like explorer if you are not careful.

Anti Spyware: This one is a 2 parter. Firstly there is spybot search and destroy, free and does the job well for spyware, it is less effective on adware which is why I use adaware 2008 for that. Both pacakges are free and have options for memory resident programs to provide active protection.

if you are worried about viruses and things there are a couple of other points that are worth bearing in mind.

Firstly do you run as an administrator on your machine? Chances are for most people that answer is yes, its the way windows comes out of the box, and for inital setup and configuaration this is good. The question then becomes how often, after the first cople of days of use do you install and uninstall programs or add devices? Not very often? right ty this then.

Create a new account, this account will be your administration account. you can call this account what ever you like as long as you remember it. Next using your new admin account go to the users section of control panel and change your normal user account down to a standard user account - not a power user just a bog standard user. Doing this removes many of he rights for your account to change system files or install programs, which makes it more difficult for viruses and malware to get into the system and gain a foot hold. When you need to install a program shift + Right click on the setup file and select Run As... from that menu. This will bring you what looks like a login prompt, select run with as this account and input the details of your admin account. Now as far as that one program is concerned you are running as an admin, for everything else however you still only have standard rights.

Next thing to do is to install firefox with the noscript and adblock + extentions. These two free add ons for firefox disable advertising banners and normal ads and java scripts. Many banner adds, particularly in pop ups deliver malware to your system so blocking them from displaying is a good idea. Adblock plus will ask you to subscripe to a ist of blocked ads which is update reguarly (dont worry this is done from multiple choice menu) so the list is always current. you can also right click and select block if it misses any. The other bennift to this is that if less items are coming down the pipe, espically graphics then your browsing experiance is faster. The second extention is for disabling java scripts, which is another popular avenue of attack. With noscript installed it blocks all scripts, and I do mean all until you create an exception for it (from its menu in the bottom left of the screen) and these exceptions can be either temporary (just that visit) for perminant. Its a pain for about a week until you get to all your usual sites and allow only the scripts needed to run what you need. However it does provide a good level of protection.

As a final point, it doesn't matter ow much protection you have on your system if you are being stupid, if you are browsing for ..ahem... adult content and the site requests a plugin to view video (other then flash) say no. Don't run pirated software as it is often contans malware and make sure that all usb drives come from known sources and are checked throughly as these can be used also.

 

For me it’s Norton Internet Security 2009. It runs fine on my system without slowing it down.
ecostsoftware.com/symantec/norton-internet-security-2009_p3974 See if that helps

 

...hmm.

I'm not convinced

Qs

 

Great minds. It's a resource hog - it always has been.

 

ESET Nod32 / Security Suite here. Nothing but good things to say about it. I use it at home and for the servers/desktops at the office

 

Ive always used AVG with vista and have had no problems. For antispyware i use a program called superantispyware, i know it sounds like a spoof program that is riddled with nothing but spyware but it does the job and its free which cant be a bad thing!

 

I'm with you guys.