Web Browsers...

I forgot, how do you start the computer in safe mode? Haven't done that in years.
Using XP.
 
Hold F8 while booting.

In my humble opinion (based on observation of one use), Malwarebytes is slower, less effective, and redundant if you use SuperAntiSpyware. Though MB did seem to have more finance behind it, so it's possible things may have changed by now (a year later)
 
I'm going to give Avira a try... I hope it's better than AVG.
 
Lucid said:
Alright, I've come to the conclusion that I have some form of adware/spyware on here.
My internet as a whole has been very slow as of late and I've noticed that when I google things and click a result, I get taken to a completely different website that usually has to do with buying shit.
Click to expand...

So far I've heard of two people having this virus.

They were both girls who suck at computers.

You fail.

I don't have any virus protection whatsoever and I haven't gotten a virus in a long long time.
 
Vegeta897 said:
So far I've heard of two people having this virus.

They were both girls who suck at computers.

You fail.

I don't have any virus protection whatsoever and I haven't gotten a virus in a long long time.
Click to expand...

I'm not the only one that uses this computer.
Anyways, Avira seemed to do the trick! :D

Thanks guys.
 
Chrome is the new Firefox. Been using it for a year now, me likey.
 
Now that Opera 10 is out Anandtech has a series of mini reviews on the browsers. The first one was about how quick the browser starts up. #2 shows CPU and memory usage and features. Not sure if they will have a 3rd one up on actual web performance or not.
 
Damn, Avira's system guard is a memory hog like no other anti-virus program I've used before.
Might end up switching back to AVG for that reason alone.
 
Avira lost some observable performance in an upgrade months ago. So it's not too much faster at scanning or launching the on-demand file scanner than AVG any more.

However, it's much better at detecting malware, and not detecting harmless files. False positives were a daily occurrence for me with AVG last year.

In my opinion, you should stick with it unless it's giving you a problem. You can disable it to play games, but if you need to do that, then you'd probably be doing that with AVG as well.

Again, in my opinion, it's the best free virus program, and possibly the best regardless of price. I've never had any virus problems with it. It's just awesome.
 
Agreed. Avira is a very nice free AV. I don't do manual scans that often nor when I'm using the PC so I've never noticed performance of one AV over another.

But Avira has the best detection of any free AV. I would seriously use it over AVG, avast! or any other free AV.
You can see in this review that Avira is rated at the end of the article and grouped with BitDefender, Symantec and McAfee. The only ones rated higher are NOD32, Kaspersky and MS.
(The reason Avira isn't rated as high as the top 3 is because it did have more than 15 false positives)
 
15 false positives?

One thing to note is that Avira (and other A/V programs) will administer an alert if it detects something that might be malware but it doesn't know for sure. It's called Heuristics.

Signature-based detection involves searching for known malicious patterns in executable code. However, it is possible for a user to be infected with new malware in which no signature exists yet. To counter such so called zero-day threats, heuristics can be used. One type of heuristic approach, generic signatures, can identify new viruses or variants of existing viruses for looking for known malicious code (or slight variations of such code) in files. Some antivirus software can also predict what a file will do if opened/run by emulating it in a sandbox and analyzing what it does to see if it performs any malicious actions. If it does, this could mean the file is malicious.
Click to expand...
Heuristics might be considered a false positive to an uninformed user.

So pay attention, if it says the virus was detected using heuristics, then it may or may not be a threat after all. You'll have to make the call and decide if you trust the software vendor.
 
I've noticed that I do have to disable Avira in order to play online with games now.
Didn't have to do that with AVG though, oh well... just something I'll have to remember to do now.
 
Avira is great. I had the full, promotional version for over a year. Yeah, it has plenty of false positives but its detection rate is unmatched. The free version is good too but it lacks a firewall which is included in the security suite. So, get yourself a third party firewall like Zone Alarm if u plan on using it.
Kaspersky comes in second but who the hell wants to pay for an AV these days.
I Am currently using Avast. So far so good.
 
VirusType2 said:
15 false positives?

One thing to note is that Avira (and other A/V programs) will administer an alert if it detects something that might be malware but it doesn't know for sure. It's called Heuristics.


Heuristics might be considered a false positive to an uninformed user.

So pay attention, if it says the virus was detected using heuristics, then it may or may not be a threat after all. You'll have to make the call and decide if you trust the software vendor.
Click to expand...

If you dismiss heuristics prompts then you are not taking advantage of the high detection rate that some of these AVs are known for...
detection rate = heuristics (for brand new virus) + list of known virus
If you don't care about the heuristics prompts then why not get an AV that has less false positives but a similar detection rate? Install, let it do it's thing without micro managing prompts or second guessing it's detections.

If you use an AV that has a lot of false positives then you might
a)be deleting important files in order to keep your system clean but those files are clean and your AV isn't that 'smart' at detecting.
b)ignore prompts because you doubt your AV's ability to detect via heuristics and only trust it to read from a list of known virus....but there really was a virus in that file which you told your AV to leave alone...
 
Asus said:
If you dismiss heuristics prompts then you are not taking advantage of the high detection rate that some of these AVs are known for...
detection rate = heuristics (for brand new virus) + list of known virus
If you don't care about the heuristics prompts then why not get an AV that has less false positives but a similar detection rate? Install, let it do it's thing without micro managing prompts or second guessing it's detections.

If you use an AV that has a lot of false positives then you might
a)be deleting important files in order to keep your system clean but those files are clean and your AV isn't that 'smart' at detecting.
b)ignore prompts because you doubt your AV's ability to detect via heuristics and only trust it to read from a list of known virus....but there really was a virus in that file which you told your AV to leave alone...
Click to expand...
I actually wasn't suggesting any particular action, I was trying to understand how they got 15 false positives in your link. I just figured maybe it was heuristics to blame, which is inherently not 100%.

I do sometimes get an alert for dubious programs that heuristics detects, and I delete them. It's not worth a risk, in my opinion. Often you can download the same file from somewhere else and there is no alert. Just goes to show that it was probably infected after all.

I can't recall any instance where I got a false positive with Avira. What I'm saying is that I think that result is BS. I have no reason to compare or change my A/V so I didn't download the .pdf. Maybe it's a result from an old version or something. :shrug:

I also prefer the free versions of A/V because I don't want a security suite that they all try to sell. I don't want or need all that extra phishing and email filter junk, and I want to choose my own firewall.

The best firewall - hands down - is OnlineArmor.
 
AVIRA is set to medium by default for it's heuristics. The review ran all AVs with settings on HIGH (which they say Avira asked them last year to do so).

In one of the reviews (from av-comparatives.org) they list what the false positives are.
just some of the 24 from Avira
false alarm found in some parts of:
6-zip
adkiller
googletool
internetdownloadmanager
MSI WLAN
PCDoorGuard
SmartProtector
StickSecurity
TrendMicro
The idea of this part of the review is that you notice how many FPs just from this review and how the AV will perform will be similar beyond this test system.
 
They should have tested them all in the default (recommended) settings as well.

That's like setting your car alarm to full sensitivity and wondering why it keeps going off when it's just a strong breeze or rainstorm makes it go off instead of a car thief.

So, unless of course you intend to set the heuristics detection on high, the test is not a good indicator of how Avira will perform.
 
They could have and probably did in the past before Avira asked them to set it higher last year.

But if they set it to medium then they wouldn't be as close as they could to comparing apples to apples like you do in benchmarks. And the detection rate wouldn't have been as good either...

In previous reviews they showed which FPs were from signatures and heuristics (med or high setting). 56% were from signatures, 30% from heuristics (high), 13% from low or med setting.
 
Asus said:
They could have and probably did in the past before Avira asked them to set it higher last year.

But if they set it to medium then they wouldn't be as close as they could to comparing apples to apples like you do in benchmarks. And the detection rate wouldn't have been as good either...

In previous reviews they showed which FPs were from signatures and heuristics (med or high setting). 56% were from signatures, 30% from heuristics (high), 13% from low or med setting.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, I guess I should have read the thing if I wanted to discuss it. :P

The second paragraph, that's a good point, I didn't think of that.

It's true the detection rate would have been lower, but that would be the case for all of them. Though I understand now why they tested them on the high setting.
 
Those same results are in the review I linked to. On demand and in retrospect. I wasn't saying Avira had a low detection rate.
The point about detection was...usefulness = gross detection - false positive (the idea, not actual math).
Meaning you try to pick the one that has a balance between them. One of those with the least false negatives but also false positives. Not really really low false negatives (virus gone flagged as clean) but high false positives (clean file flagged as virus).

The reason I like Avira over other free AVs is because it gets one of those really really right which AVG and avast! don't. But I was also not advising taking that number and running with it without looking at the whole picture.
 
Yeah, I figured some of those benchmarks were recycled from the same thing you posted.

I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to prove anything or disagree with you. In fact, it supported what you said about Avira having a high number of false positives.

I was just supporting my unproven claim that Avira was the best free scanner. I just happened to come across it without looking and I remembered this thread. I liked how it wasn't a pdf. I was really posting it for the benefit of Lucid.

It shows that the Avira scanner is twice as fast as AVG and is the best A/V at detecting actual threats. Which is just something I observed from using both for a long time, not something I actually read anywhere.

It's also a good article because he goes on to explain why the email scanner is just something to get you to buy it, and not actually useful. A red herring he calls it. Something I realized right away.

Personally, I don't like Avast. I tried it once and didn't like it. Yet a year later, I find it impossible to remove all of the files. Sort of like malware. It seems it has become part of the system files.
 
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