Jerry,

I posted this in another thread, but I think it's worth repeating.

I occassionly do some tech support work for a local University. The standard anti-virus is McAfee, however, when some malware sneaks thru McAfee, we run manual scan using (free) Malwarebytes to get rid of most everything that's infected the PC.

Furthermore, on my laptop, whenever work slows to a crawl, I pop up taskmanager and it's almost always McAfee that hogging the CPU.

So, on my editing workstation, I do not have any real-time virus scan installed. Rather, I run a manual Malwarebytes scan once a week to make I'm clean. This has worked well so far.

...The other, other Jerry

Almost every week, someone brings their sick computer to me to fix. In every single case, it does not have a virus, but has something far worse:

an antivirus program.

McAfee and Norton are pure evil. The last three computers brought here had one or the other. It was taking over five minutes for the computer to respond to something that should have happened in less than two seconds.

And that is not an exaggeration: that is a literal fact, measured by a stopwatch.

I removed the anti-virus programs and everything was just fine. I looked to see if there was any virus infection (it is easy to spot), and there was none. So, I left the computers "unguarded," without any anti-virus program running.

I do not run anti-virus on any of my dozen computers, and never have.

I always recommend -- especially for an editing computer -- to not run any anti-virus; to turn off ALL automatic updates on all programs (my recently retired PC had not been updated in six years); and disable the background indexing done by Microsoft Office (and by other programs).

If you truly must have an antivirus program, to satisfy some inner need for a false sense of security, download the free Avast program, but disable all of its background checking. Just manually download virus definitions once a week and then do a manual virus scan whenever you have time to kill and want to see your disk light flash.

I am not saying that viruses don't exist or that some computers haven't gotten infected, but if you don't visit bad sites, and don't install computer programs that you haven't purchased, and don't open attachments from email that haven't been scanned by Gmail or Yahoo, you are pretty darned safe.

And, if you are still worried, partition your C: drive into a C: drive and some other letter. Put all your programs and Windows on the C: drive, but nothing else. Put all your other stuff on the other drive letter. Then, do an image backup (using Acronis Trueimage) of the C: drive. This takes ten minutes or less. If you ever have a problem, you restore the C: drive from the image, which takes fifteen minutes, and your data is all intact. I've had to do this quite a few times to recover from cockpit error (being a programmer I sometimes go wandering into areas of the computer that shouldn't be touched). I am back to where I was in only fifteen minutes.

According to my web host (Superb), viruses are old hat and rootkits are in. These are "malware" and install themselves as normal applications but with a Jekyl and Hyde personality.

What happens is you see a free program, like a utility, or converter, or whatever and install something, and a rootkit gets created.

You've installed as admin probably, so the rootkit ass/u/me/s your security level too. These things cloak themselves and the only way to find them is with a rootkit detector utility.

Microsoft releases a malware detector and fixer every so often for free, but if you don't take any updates you're like an ostrich.

OpenSource software is safe, but you must download it from the author's site or known safe portal like SourceForge or VideoHelp, CNet, etc.

And the old wisdom of not opening e-mail unless you know the sender is baloney. Set your e-mail for "Text Only" and don't even let in the graphics.

>Furthermore, on my laptop, whenever work slows to a crawl, I pop up taskmanager and it's almost always McAfee that hogging the CPU.

This has been my experience iwth McAfee. It came "free" when I purchased my new video PC a year ago. After running with it for a while I did some research and learned it consists of a number of independent programs McAfee bought and bolted together. There is little integration and it is a real hog. I notice it much more on my six year old laptop, but I'm thinking maybe it is the cause of some of my Vegas 9c instability problems on my video PC.

I'll take a look at Malwarebytes.

As I mentioned in my original post, I did find some very positive comments on the new Norton suite. I may look at that as well.

Jerry

>And, if you are still worried, partition your C: drive into a C: drive and some other letter. Put all your programs and Windows on the C: drive, but nothing else.

Hi John. I've not reached the point of feeling comfortable without a virus scanner. I do exactly what you say regarding the c: partition and I use TrueImage to create a new image copy every week. In addition, I do a backup of my c: and data partition every night to my Windows Home Server.

Still I get nnnnervous.

Jerry

>If you have the "show when connected" option enabled for your network connection you'll have a taskbar icon that you can right-mouse-button click on to quickly get to enable/disable

Good tip. Now if I had a similar one for the Anti Virus I would be happy. With the three or four I've used before, they all make it a multi-step process to temporarily disable.

Jerry

Norton is definitely a killer. An outside IT firm installed it on the multimedia stations at our church and they became unusable for multimedia. On one of them i spent several days pulling all the Norton bits out before it was functional again. The other one require a wipe & reinstall.

No Norton again, not ever.

Norton IS a virus.

I'll concur with johnmeyer and the others that Norton is often at the heart of a tortuously-slow system. It's the first thing I look for when someone asks for help. Often times, an expired trial-version of Norton is running along with another anti-virus program, which further complicates matters, and slows things to a crawl.


Back in the 'good old days', I had a healthy respect for Peter Norton and his utilities, but that was before he sold his interest in the software. These days, I'd say that the Symantec's Norton Removal Tool is the best piece of software they currently offer...

I had the same opinion about Norton. I removed it from my three computers in 2008. But look at any of the reviews of the 2009 or 2010 Norton Security Suite. It was completely rewritten from the ground up. Every review I've looked at praises the remarkable improvement in performance.

I'm certainly not trying to sell anyone on Norton, but based on what I've read of the new version, I would prefer to try it than stay with McAfee.

From PC Magazine:

Last year Symantec pulled out all the stops to reduce Norton Internet Security's impact on system performance. This year's version of the suite, Norton Internet Security 2010 ($69.99 direct for 3 licenses), focuses both on improving the user's experience and raising overall protection. As we saw with our early look at the beta of Norton Internet Security 2010, the release version succeeds at both aims without sacrificing performance, securing its position as our Editors' Choice.

And from AntiVirusWare.com:



Jerry

@TeeTime:

Interesting information -- thanks.

It's difficult for an app that's caused so much grief for so many to get us to give it a second look, especially when it's not freeware. But I'll be keeping my eye on what others have to say about Norton's newer versions in the future.

First of all, I couldn't help but notice the ads for Norton Anti Virus on the AntiVirusWare.com website.

I have recently switched a few of my machines to the free Microsoft "Security Essentials" anti-virus software. It has a small memory footprint, loads fast and immediately caught a couple of genuine viruses that AVG and Comodo anti-virus missed.

http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

That's what I am using on 3 of our 4 computers - MSE is great, fast, free. The only draw back is it takes longer to complete a full system scan, but because it uses so little resources having it running while doing other work has little impate on performance, unnoticeable to me anyway. .

I've also put most of my machines on a diet of MSE, which has garnered good reviews for effectiveness, small footprint and low impact on system performance. So far, I'm happy with it. Used to use AVG Free.

One derog with MSE -- I can't find a way to disable it temporarily, other than inhibiting its startup during reboot.

I have done the same thing John. I was using AVG until I found that it was getting to be a resource hog. My buddy sent me a review of Microsoft "Security Essentials" which seemed to indicate that it was a good bet, so I switched rather than installing the latest version of AVG. My only complaint is that it cannot be turned off easily. One must kill the process 3 to 4 times before it doesn't come back.

Regards,
Jerry

Woohoo! Look at the time of our posts! Can't get any closer than that!!!

>I have recently switched a few of my machines to the free Microsoft "Security Essentials" anti-virus software. It has a small memory footprint, loads fast and immediately caught a couple of genuine viruses that AVG and Comodo anti-virus missed.

John, I had completely forgotten about this from MS. I think I'll give it a try on one of my PCs.

Jerry