Virus scan recommendations?

[craigt]

I've been using McAfee for many years (since DOS 3.2) but for the last year's subscription have been barely putting up with it. It has gotten much too invasive causing various timeout issues on a couple of systems here. Any recommendations for realtime and on-demand virus scanners that are still good but not as invasive?

[petzl]

I've been using McAfee for many years (since DOS 3.2) but for the last year's subscription have been barely putting up with it. It has gotten much too invasive causing various timeout issues on a couple of systems here. Any recommendations for realtime and on-demand virus scanners that are still good but not as invasive?

If you use Windows XP and above you have already paid for the best Virus detector available

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows...rity-essentials

It does everything you need except Firewall it is not memory intensive (yet)

XP user should consider a freeware one like Zone Alarm WIN7's firewall is adequate

You need to keep your Windows machine clean to keep it fast

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download (free version but give $25 donation) Use this to clean your registry (consider Defraggler for defrag)

Read my signature

Microsoft put out a Virus detector for Win3.11 and intended to have it included with WIN95 but came into legal complications from other virus manufacturers

[turetzsr]

<snip>

XP user should consider a freeware one like Zone Alarm WIN7's firewall is adequate

<snip>

...Please be sure to read Zone Alarm's License Agreement, especially section 2.1 and especially if you are doing this neither as an individual user only for your personal home use or for a not-for-profit 501©(3) charitable entity (excluding government entities and educational institutions)!

[craigt]

Thanks for the recommendation and warning. After reviewing too much stuff I wound up getting AdAware Pro -- now I'll have to run it for a while and get some testing in to see how it does.

[petzl]

Thanks for the recommendation and warning. After reviewing too much stuff I wound up getting AdAware Pro -- now I'll have to run it for a while and get some testing in to see how it does.

One thing in Win7, which slows down computer scanning is Media player. You may notice that AV scans and file searches of the C: drive hang up on C:\Windows\....Media Player\Art Cache\LocalMLS (as example)

Go here to find how to disable this "feature" (deleting LocalMLS takes ages)

http://www.mydigitallife.info/how-to-disab...rvice-wmpnetwk/

By default, Microsoft has configured Windows 7 to enable and turn on background services when needed. However, some of these background processes are not always in use or required. When they are constantly running, they will consume a large amount of resources and slow down the system’s performance.

This can also have GB's of rubbish being loaded on to drive