Final_metroid Posted May 12, 2007 Share Posted May 12, 2007 ok, so I need new antivirus and firewall. Currently, I have McAffe firewall and antivirus. However as I have heard MANY times before, McAffe seems to suck. I have heard things about NOD 32, but how is it better? Also, I feel the need for a firewall, but I dont know of any individual programs that just instate firewalls and not any extra clutter like McAffe does. In the case of Trojans, sometimes my Windows Explorer crashes as well as a hidden program called "Dr Watson postmortem debugger". The program itself is not malicious, however, a friend of mine says it is exploitable. Any feedback would be appreciated Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blazingame Posted May 14, 2007 Share Posted May 14, 2007 AVG Free Edition Works Really well for anti virus. For your Firewall I recomend Zone Alarm and Peer Guardian. Spybot go for SPybot S&D. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smoke Posted May 14, 2007 Share Posted May 14, 2007 AVG Free Edition Works Really well for anti virus. For your Firewall I recomend Zone Alarm and Peer Guardian. Spybot go for SPybot S&D. PeerGuardian is a placebo for piracy, nothing more. It blocks 30% of the IP addresses out there for no reason other than "It might be the RIAA/an organization that could be tracking you". ZoneAlarm's rather decent, but can be a bit too active in blocking, and I've seen cases where it just screws up settings to a point where a system either becomes unresponsive or refuses network connections completely. Actual recommendation: Ditch the McAfee, and get a paid subscription to Avira's AntiVir. It's pretty great for virus detection, and the paid version doesn't have the annoyances(Daily popup window telling you to buy it) of the free version, with the addition of a mailscanner and spyware protection. It's also low on memory and CPU use. If you've got a router in place, you most likely won't need another software firewall in place. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bigfoot Posted May 14, 2007 Share Posted May 14, 2007 I love NOD32. It has a pretty good detection rate, and it uses very little resources. Updating it is painless too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pyrion Posted May 14, 2007 Share Posted May 14, 2007 The new ZoneAlarm has a "gaming mode" that you can activate within the systray that basically puts in an "auto-allow/auto-deny" mode (you select which) to silence the popup messages that would otherwise cause the system to hang (such as with a fullscreen game). ZoneAlarm's other annoyance that becomes especially obvious is if you use a packet capture utility like Wireshark - it will constantly attempt DNS lookups of zonelabs.com. That part's solved by getting that IP address yourself and inserting such an entry into your HOSTS file. Course, if it changes, and you can no longer resolve zonelabs.com you'd have to remove the entry temporarily to get the new IP from your DNS. I second the suggestion to switch to AntiVir. A couple of my (recently departed) dad's coworkers made the switch from Norton to AntiVir and haven't looked back. And the NAT masquerading router will only typically block unsolicited external connections, it won't prevent applications from "calling home," whereas ZoneAlarm will provided you don't have gaming mode activated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Final_metroid Posted May 14, 2007 Author Share Posted May 14, 2007 Ok so Antivir or NOD32? Since I do have a router, i WOULD say the firewall be unnecessary, but once or twice I had some trojans installed in my computer that allowed it to be hacked. (including the "dr watson" thing) Zone alarm seems promising but from what smoke said I want some feedback before I commit to it. Also, I have ad-aware SE, how does spybot compare to it though? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Final_metroid Posted May 17, 2007 Author Share Posted May 17, 2007 alright I've done some research, however everyone keeps beating around the bush about small features and such but theres no straight answer whether I should go with AVIRA or NOD32. Also, should I uninstall McAffe considering it SUCKS? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Secret Agent Man Posted May 17, 2007 Share Posted May 17, 2007 The newest version of ZoneAlarm has an annoying "feature" that blocks IRC access as a safety measure (can't connect to any IRC server). This is fine and all, but it is enabled by default and you cannot disable it unless you are using the pro version of the product. The way I got around this was to activate the free trial of the pro version and disable it, then when it reverted back to the free version I didn't have a problem. It's annoying that they enable this limiting feature by default without any recourse in disabling it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bigfoot Posted May 17, 2007 Share Posted May 17, 2007 alright I've done some research, however everyone keeps beating around the bush about small features and such but theres no straight answer whether I should go with AVIRA or NOD32.Also, should I uninstall McAffe considering it SUCKS? Basically NOD32 if you're looking for a paid AV program, and AVIRA for a free AV program. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Final_metroid Posted May 17, 2007 Author Share Posted May 17, 2007 I've heard registered AVIRA is the way to go however, what other functions are opened besides that reminder going away? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smoke Posted May 17, 2007 Share Posted May 17, 2007 The paid version of Antivir also gives you access to a faster update server, includes e-mail scanning, and protects against adware and spyware. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Final_metroid Posted May 17, 2007 Author Share Posted May 17, 2007 I see, would using Ad-aware in conjunction with MS antispyware and spywareblaster be enough to compensate? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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