But if you are looking for a FREE antivirus, i would recommend AVIRA Antivir from germany. its free with low memory footprint. Fast scans and has a 99.7 total detection rate. many false positives, but ei its free…

Currently I use McAfee, the full package, because my internet provider offered the package for free. Normally I just use AVG, much better antivirus/antispyware.

The Anti-Virus market is worth millions and the truth is that the vast majority of people have no problems at all – virtually all the computers I see infected have peer-to-peer software like the dreaded Limewire which is like taking intravenous drugs in a brothel.

My rant against Norton (and Macafee)is based on day-to-day experience where I find it causing as many problems as it prevents or solves, and the fact that it comes pre-installed on so many computers and most people just stick with it (and pay) because they aren’t aware of their options.

I have no vested interest, it’s just my experience.

Because there is no clear way how to test AV solution. Actually there is no way to directly compare and test most types of software.

You may throw set of few thousands viruses at AV and it will be perfect but user may encounter none of those but something completely different… and undetected.

So is it good antivirus for doing admirably in the test or bad antivirus because of letting real computer get infected?

On information on sites – it’s heavily PR. Meaning companies lie to make their product look good. I hadn’t caught Norton on that (it’s uncommon around here and I rarely check their site) but I had that from Kaspersky (big time).

Lately I strongle suspect viruses are being geo-targeted. NOD32 was one of the best solution two years ago (we use it at work so I have medium-scale impression) but it slowly got worse to the point of being near-useless. Plenty of new viruses slip past it easily.

- there is no way to test AV reliably;
- single breach can have major consequences;
- concept is inherently flawed (there is always time frame between virus release and database update);
- companies lie to look good and resort to bundling and other annoying ways to get their share of pie;

Frankly it is no wonder AV software gets flamed all the time. :)

http://www.av-comparatives.org/comparativesreviews/main-tests

and Symantec is the first site to check when trying to rid a computer of a virus or trojan manually. What other site has such detailed information about what files are loaded and what registry strings are affected.

Note that AV-Comparatives gives the highest rating, advanced+, to Symantec and McAfee, two vendors that most of us consider to be almost a form of spyware or at least nagware because of the numerous dll files they load all over the system (not to mention startup items. (NOD32 also gets an advanced+ rating in the Feb. 2009 report).

I’m not a fan of Norton for the reasons stated previously, and prefer Avira’s Antivir, but try to find detailed information about all viruses on the Avira site.

Wouldn’t a good uninstaller that monitors the installation – like Zsoft’s Uninstaller or Total Uninstall aid in completely uinstalling all the tracks that Norton has left behind?
Why not just use Autoruns (Sysinternal’s excellent utility) and disable any dll associated with Symantec or Norton?

Has anyone used this Norton scanner yet?

That sounds so convenient. :) DrWeb LiveCD suffers from same updates issue, it can update by network at least.

I have yet to check LiveCD from Kaspersky.

Norton leaves much to much hooks in your system and is very hard to remove

Native removal tool (SymNRT) does pretty good job cleaning up.

They are like a cancer spreading throughout the system and cause as many problems as they solve, in my exerience.

The ONLY reason they are so ‘popular’ is bcause of the trial bloatware that is installed on so many new computers.

http://ftp.kaspersky.com/devbuilds/RescueDisk/

They don’t update it with last virus bases, but I saw instructions on how to push updates to the ISO on some forum.

And this is based on what? As for me it detection rate is perfectly fine.

Kaspersky is better

Except that their scanner requires installation which makes it useless in most situations and probably impossible to run from LiveCD.

Kaspersky is better.

If you know something about viruses you have to look at how McAfee is performing lately.

Norton is now one of the lightest on resources antivirus nowadays but it’s detection rate is not that good.

Dr.Web CureIt, Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool and Clamwin are too. :) And Clamwin works well with any other AV because it doesn’t inject it’s modules into system.

And CureIt even doesn’t require installation.

I’ve found McAfee and Avira works well together on the same PC (XP Pro and Vista).