Poll: *** The All New Windows AV Thread - Keep All AV Questions in Here ***

What AV do you use?

  • Total voters
    801

BananaDunka

BananaDunka

BananaDunka

Man of Honour
Joined
18 Oct 2002
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100,334
Location
South Coast
Weird issue encountered this morning with BitDefender Free edition. I should note that up until now it has been trouble free for the good part of 12-18 months and this may well have been a glitch but worth mentioning...

I had my PC on overnight as I do most nights, it's in a low power state when not in use and all components are power efficient when idle so it's all fine before green peace activists emerge with pitchforks :p - I noticed when attempting to load a browser window in the morning that it was taking ages, noted the CPU temp reading 61 degrees... Took ages to load task manager but once it loaded I noticed gpserv.exe consuming 100% of all 8 CPU cores. It was utilising 400MB of RAM.

I attempted to manually stop the service and exe but access was denied (expected since gpserve is BitDefender's resident service so won't close outside of the application itself).

I had to restart the PC before it was back to normal.

I don't know at what point during the night the glitch might have started but I'd rather not have to wait up, go to the PC and see it has been idling for hours at 100% CPU and at 61 degrees.

I suppose one good thing to note is that my PC is stable :p

Might give the latest AVAST 2015 free edition a cruise now as an excuse to try something new.
 

BananaDunka

BananaDunka

BananaDunka

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Posts
100,334
Location
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To top it off, just uninstalled BitDefender only to be greeted by a BSOD upon logging back in after a restart :eek:

Turns out BD messed up the Intel Matrix Storage Manager driver as the BSOD was caused by iastorA.sys - I had to boot into Safe Mode and install an older Intel Rapid Storage driver to fix the BSOD and am now progressing through updating that to the latest version.

Such faff.
 

wiiija

wiiija

wiiija

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
2,956
Location
Northants
I've not run any antivirus for years and years now.

I tend to view the same websites, rarely go to any site I'd consider dodgy, I download a lot from usenet but only using listed .nzb on a decent indexing site. Out of interest I just installed Avast and ran a full scan and sure enough it found absolutely nothing at all, so I tried BitDefender and that found nothing at all either.

I'll stick to running nothing, I honestly don't know how people manage to get so much Malware etc
 

linktoinsanity

linktoinsanity

linktoinsanity

Don
Joined
5 Oct 2008
Posts
8,978
Location
Kent
mrk said:
To top it off, just uninstalled BitDefender only to be greeted by a BSOD upon logging back in after a restart :eek:

Turns out BD messed up the Intel Matrix Storage Manager driver as the BSOD was caused by iastorA.sys - I had to boot into Safe Mode and install an older Intel Rapid Storage driver to fix the BSOD and am now progressing through updating that to the latest version.

Such faff.
Click to expand...

I had a lot of issues with my Work PC in relation to Bit Defender, so that's why I avoid it now myself.

I use Avast these days mainly, except on my work PC as I get a free ESET license at work.
 

Macro

Macro

Macro

Soldato
Joined
9 Jun 2006
Posts
5,791
I liked Bitdefender but found it was way too chatty for me highlighting cookies etc. I don't mind spending a few quid on A/V if if gives me a good level of coverage and bought a year of Kaspersky last year for £20 on the recommendation of a fried who actually used to work at a different AV vendor. So far i've been impressed by how quiet and low on resources it is. I suppose it's one of those things like insurance where you hope you never need to actually use it but on that one odd occasion its priceless.
 
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metalmackey

metalmackey

metalmackey

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2,173
Location
Behind you
Anyone else finding the 2.x version of Malwarebytes very unstable? Both the free and Pro versions crash on my PC just updating database ect. Tried 2 anti virus prgrams incase there was a conflict. 1.x was flawless.
 

Elevon

Elevon

Elevon

Soldato
Joined
22 Sep 2006
Posts
3,330
Macro said:
I liked Bitdefender but found it was way too chatty for me highlighting cookies etc. I don't mind spending a few quid on A/V if if gives me a good level of coverage and bought a year of Kaspersky last year for £20 on the recommendation of a fried who actually used to work at a different AV vendor. So far i've been impressed by how quiet and low on resources it is. I suppose it's one of those things like insurance where you hope you never need to actually use it but on that one odd occasion its priceless.
Click to expand...


Give Panda Free 2015 a try http://uk.pcmag.com/antivirus-reviews/35064/review/panda-free-antivirus-2015 ,I find it's very light and very good.
 
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Matt-Page

Matt-Page

Matt-Page

Soldato
Joined
23 Nov 2004
Posts
3,769
Well my Dad has recently got a new Laptop, within hours he had some spyware 'Price Fountain'.

MSE didn;t detect it, and I've updated, rebooted and re-scanned, still nothing detected! Downloading Spybot now to see if it finds it. Not impressed with MSE!
 

Crixus00

Crixus00

Crixus00

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Joined
24 Apr 2008
Posts
1,178
Location
South-West
wiiija said:
I've not run any antivirus for years and years now.

I tend to view the same websites, rarely go to any site I'd consider dodgy, I download a lot from usenet but only using listed .nzb on a decent indexing site. Out of interest I just installed Avast and ran a full scan and sure enough it found absolutely nothing at all, so I tried BitDefender and that found nothing at all either.

I'll stick to running nothing, I honestly don't know how people manage to get so much Malware etc
Click to expand...

Same! I stopped using Anti-Virus suites a couple of years ago. Every now and then (once every few months) I will run a manual scan of Malwarebytes but that's about it.
 

Dean037

Dean037

Dean037

Associate
Joined
28 Aug 2011
Posts
395
HI everyone not been on here for a while but just purchased a acer aspire laptop and the anti virus has expired so i have downloaded avast free and turned on windows firwall is this enough or do i need more ? there seems to be lots of mixed thoughts but any help would be great

thanks dean
 

KIA

KIA

KIA

Man of Honour
Joined
14 Nov 2004
Posts
13,785
Dean037 said:
HI everyone not been on here for a while but just purchased a acer aspire laptop and the anti virus has expired so i have downloaded avast free and turned on windows firwall is this enough or do i need more ? there seems to be lots of mixed thoughts but any help would be great

thanks dean
Click to expand...

- Set Windows update to automatic
- Keep UAC enabled
- Use a modern browser such as Chrome or Firefox
- Use Secunia PSI to keep software up to date
- Avoid using Java if possible

http://krebsonsecurity.com/tools-for-a-safer-pc/
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/05/krebss-3-basic-rules-for-online-safety/
 

Dean037

Dean037

Dean037

Associate
Joined
28 Aug 2011
Posts
395
KIA said:
- Set Windows update to automatic
- Keep UAC enabled
- Use a modern browser such as Chrome or Firefox
- Use Secunia PSI to keep software up to date
- Avoid using Java if possible

http://krebsonsecurity.com/tools-for-a-safer-pc/
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/05/krebss-3-basic-rules-for-online-safety/
Click to expand...

hellow and thanks windows update is automatic and i use google chrome can i ask what is UAC and i will download secunia psi, should i set recommended updates same as important and also there is a box to tick for keeping windows products upto date should i do that aswel

Thanks dean
 
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