Antivirus Dilemna

[citco]

I started out by using norton. That didnt work out well for me considering my first computer was a celeron 730MHZ with ram 64mb.

Since then I have upgraded my desktop and laptops to levels of pure awe but still i cannot figure out which antivirus is the best!

AVG, Avast, Panda, TrendMicro, ESET e.t.c none of them can really rid my computers of annoying trojan and worm threats. If one antivirus is good at discovering them, then it will render most of my infected files unexecutable since its so-called 'curing' damages the .exes.

Has anyone had any satisfaction of up to at least 90% with any antivirus? Please advise.

[compwhizii]

If it's really bad you should reinstall.

[citco]

If it's really bad you should reinstall.

You see, that is what I have been doing. I even had a 5 min recovery plan installed. The problem is whenever I download vista updates among others, I would like to back-up the current state snapshot.

.....now, you dont really want to backup a snapshot of a corrupt system so, you re-install, re-update bla bla bla.

if I had a great antivirus, I wouldnt have to stress this much.

If anyone knows a great a-v, do advise, if I haven't tried it before, ill give it a shot.

[Ainokea]

What exactly are you doing with your computer? download warez or something? because other than download all sorts of stuff you shouldn't get that much problems with viruses especially with an av and firewall. You might want to change your computing habbits

Try spybot S&D on boot disk with like ubuntu that helps sometimes....

[Smith6612]

Amonst all of the computers I come across, if there's an infected file, I quarantine it, and then I delete it once I make sure it's not something important. I never bother to clean it as it normally fails or the thing shows back up.

But might as ask, where are you getting all of these viruses, malware, etc at?

[adamlinux]

well I like avg free, spybot search and destroy, pc spyware doctor, and hijack this is good too. It's hard to say without any specifics though, it would help to know exactly what its doing.

[Spartan Erik]

Well the first thing you should do is find out why you're getting all those viruses in the first place. Best way to stop them is to prevent them.

I use AVG free as my back up in case something does get by without my knowledge. But seeing as how AVG has caught everything mid-threat and allowed me to take action immediately, I'd say it does a good job. Never had any viruses or malware on my machine, just a few web trojans every now and then

[steronius]

Okay with that crappy PC you have (Celeron 730MHZ with 64mb) you may want to NOT use a full antivirus, but instead use ThreatFire (ThreatFire.com) in conjunction with Sandboxie (SandBoxie.com).

ThreatFire will suffice as a minimalistic antivirus. Sandboxie will "sandbox" you web browser so that if you do pick up a virus from webbrowsing, it will not infect your PC.

Also you can use Clamwin antivirus (Clamwin.com) which is a Scan-only antivirus. (It does not protect real-time, but it is very good at finding infections)

[tridge]

I use Avast and Spybot Search and Destroy on my personal and work machines.

I work in a Tech Shop, if I find a virus that is not removed by no more then two anti-virus programs and no more then 2 anti-spyware programs I will use hijack this and if those all fail...I reformat, it is just not worth the time or the inevitable return visit a week or two down the road.

I offer our customers a Norton Ghost DVD option and/or burned DVD's of their pictures/documents/shortcuts/favorites prior to the reformat.

The number one thing I tell customers though is...

Watch your surfing habits. There should be absolutely no reason to get a rootkit, virus, malware or trojan if you are doing legal, moral and thoughtful things on the internet.

[metroman]

Are there any applications that you absolutely need that only run under Windows? If not, you can back up all your important files, wipe the disk, and install a Linux distribution. This is a very drastic action, but I think it would be the best solution for you. Linux distributions are immune to all malware because malware is targeted toward Windows. Also, Linux uses less resources than Windows. Some Linux distributions that are newbie-friendly are Ubuntu, Mint, and PCLinuxOS.