Thinkpads Forum

I've given up on AVG. It turned my X31 into a 286.

Is there any competent alternative, that is actually free?

I like Avast. They have a free home version.

Yeah my next choice is Avira too. It seems pretty good.

:::

Avira.....!

:::

i was using avg-free 7.5 and had to make a choice, too. i went with the eset nod32 after reading feedback here. i know... it's not free. but i decided that the protection was worth the cost. so far, i really like it.

avira has one of the best heuristics scanner in the market right now.... if u wonder what is heuristics, its a scanning method based on the behaviours of a program to determine whether its a virus or not....

the only antivirus with similar level of heuristics capability is eset nod32... well, its not free tho...

Another vote for Avast.

Avira is nice ...

I'm running AVG 8.0 and according to task manager its using 0% cpu and 1.5MB memory (as I write this it dropped to 500KB). Its definitely not the best scanner out there, but the GUI of Avira annoyed me. Non-free Kaspersky is my vote.

sparta.rising wrote:I'm running AVG 8.0 and according to task manager its using 0% cpu and 1.5MB memory (as I write this it dropped to 500KB). Its definitely not the best scanner out there, but the GUI of Avira annoyed me. Non-free Kaspersky is my vote.

At times, I noted AVG 8.0 also using "0%", but there was always a consistent sluggishness and stuttering and other weirdness after it was installed. I think it was doing some form of pre-fetch on browser connections. Anyhow, once it was removed, and I installed Avast, things are pretty much back to normal, except for the annoying announcement blasting "Virus database

Too bad. I liked AVG 7.5. But apparently no one is immune from bloat.

The announcement is what turned me off of Avast and I think Avira was the update manager

Just switched to AntiVir a few minutes ago. The AVG updater wasn't working correctly--in addition to the generally bloated feel of v. 8.0. It looks like one can reduce the unwanted notifications and ads in AntiVir according to what's stated here.

By the way, how do people like AntiVir's Guard feature? Does it bog down the system? Usually I don't install them.

Tim M wrote:
By the way, how do people like AntiVir's Guard feature? Does it bog down the system? Usually I don't install them.

What on Earth is the point in even having an anti-virus program if you don't run the real-time guard?

goofyGAguy wrote:

Tim M wrote:
By the way, how do people like AntiVir's Guard feature? Does it bog down the system? Usually I don't install them.

What on Earth is the point in even having an anti-virus program if you don't run the real-time guard?

Bogging down the system, as I stated. If the guard slows opening of files by a half-second (as some others do), it can get very tedious in my line of work.

Plus, running a nightly scheduled scan has been more than sufficient for me for years.

maybe your computers are too old or something ..

I run AVG 8 and have no problems what so ever. Meh, the boot time slows a bit due to the daily updates, but that's good right

miro_gt wrote:maybe your computers are too old or something ..

Well gosh, that's rather dismissively unhelpful. Details of my machine are in my signature, as always.

tselling wrote:I like Avast. They have a free home version.

Avast has been my favorite for years now. I find it to be very light and hardly notice it is even there, except for when it finds something or updates itself.

Between Avast for anti-virus, Spybot Search & Destroy for additional spyware (just don't use the TeaTimer) and FireFox for primary browsing, I've been able to keep machines clean for a very long time between cleanups for many people.

I have another recent problem with AVG 8.0, with which I've not had previous problems other than annoyances from their constant attempts to hawk the paid versions of the software.

On the notebook I am presently using, which is a T60 running Vista with an ATI 1400 video card in it, AVG Free 8.0 crashes the system while doing a full system scan, part way through the scan with a total system lockup that requires a hard reboot to restart. Once the lockup begins the trackpoint mouse continues to work but nothing else, and the system is frozen. One time the system was left alone for a couple of hours and it rebooted itself. The Vista self-diagnosing crash applet relayed the dump file to MS and the response was that this was caused by the ATI video driver. I have the latest ATI video drivers installed and there is nothing new to download from MS, ATI, or Lenovo for this card.

My guess is that in fact the ATI driver thing is merely the last thing that Vista is noticing before the system goes out completely and is not really the cause since I've only had this problem when running AVG scans, not in any other circumstance, although I guess there could be some sort of incompatibility between the ATI drivers and some of the code in the current version of AVG Free.

Has anyone else experienced this problem and found a solution? I've already uninstalled and reinstalled AVG Free, and the system is otherwise completely up to date on Lenovo and MS updates.

I'm surprised you re-installed AVG after your crashes, and your (probable) reading of the other posts in this thread.
Dump that POS and install the free Avast or Avira, or buy EsetNOD32.

Guys, why are you talking about AVG like R.I.P. AVG free 7.5 I still have it and it still does its regular updating process at daily basis Am I missing something?...

Marin

RealBlackStuff wrote:I'm surprised you re-installed AVG after your crashes, and your (probable) reading of the other posts in this thread.
Dump that POS and install the free Avast or Avira, or buy EsetNOD32.

You have assumed too much.

I only read this thread afterwards, and have yet to deal with the sytem further. I have so many Thinkpads at this point that they all have to compete for my attention.

All of these Thinkpads have AVG Free 8.0 installed on them, and I've not had any problems with the other systems as of yet, which is not to say that there isn't something better out there. Antivirus programs aren't that important to me as long as none of my systems get infected, so maybe I've just become complacent.

I will try one of the other free antivirus programs you reference on the effected system and see how it goes.

ADDENDUM:

After installing and using Avira, it also crashes into a system freeze after what it says is 99.8% of the system being scanned, with the file shown to be in process listed as "Win32spl.dll." This is a network printer driver and I don't think it has anything to do with the crash. I repeated the scan in safe mode, and to my amazement safe mode froze/crashed also! Although the video (ATI) drivers were implicated by MS's analysis, I have my doubts.

I did a complete PC DR scan of the video card hardware TWICE, which found nothing amiss.

I'm going to remove and reinstall the ATI driver package, then run a complete PC DR scan on the system, although I have my doubts about what this will show.

The fact that both AVG Free 8.0 AND Avira have crashed/frozen the system at the end of a complete disk scan suggests something is going on that is independent of the specific antivirus software, although presumably they have crashed the system for the same reason. If it is not a driver problem then either Lenovo has offloaded a bad "vista update module" onto my system during a recent "System Update," or a subtle hardware problem such as bad RAM or a Mobo problem are at fault.

Ken Fox wrote:I'm going to remove and reinstall the ATI driver package, then run a complete PC DR scan on the system, although I have my doubts about what this will show.

Ken,

If PC DR isn't finding anything with the drivers in place, it probably won't find anything with the drivers gone. Try the virus scan with the drivers gone. (I don't think this will make a difference either, since you had problems even in safe mode.)

Another thing to consider is that you might have a slightly flaky hard disk sector. If the system always crashes on the same file, you could (from a mode where you have modification rights over the file) copy the file, rename the old one to something different, and rename the copied file to the original name. This locks the possibly-bad sector to a differently-named file, for diagnosis.

David Ross wrote: Ken,

If PC DR isn't finding anything with the drivers in place, it probably won't find anything with the drivers gone. Try the virus scan with the drivers gone. (I don't think this will make a difference either, since you had problems even in safe mode.)

Another thing to consider is that you might have a slightly flaky hard disk sector. If the system always crashes on the same file, you could (from a mode where you have modification rights over the file) copy the file, rename the old one to something different, and rename the copied file to the original name. This locks the possibly-bad sector to a differently-named file, for diagnosis.

Hi David,

Long time no hear!

I did previously uninstall the ATI driver package and I ran the antivirus test which crashed as before, on the same file.

An interesting support for your thesis on the hard drive is that I'm in the process of running the FULL PC Dr. test (before I just tested the video subsystem) and the hard disk failed the "SMART short self-test." This supports the notion that the hard drive is defective.

Interestingly, this is the only TP I have (well, maybe one other also) that has its native hard drive inside it. It is a T60 15" SXGA+ IPS Flexview machine that I bought from the outlet store a few months ago, which interestingly came with a 4 year onsite warranty. The drive is a 7200rpm Hitachi (I think 1st generation, i.e. 7K100, 100gb size).

I'll repeat the hard drive portion of the PC Dr. test, then assuming the problem is confirmed I'll call Lenovo to get them to replace the hard drive. I won't let them send the tech out as this is such a simple repair it would be a waste of everyone's time.

Thanks, hopefully you have deserted a.c. by now (for your own sake, that is)

The 7200rpm Hitachis don't have the best track record. (I say this having just ordered a new machine containing one.)

Ken Fox wrote: Thanks, hopefully you have deserted a.c. by now (for your own sake, that is)

I stlil check in on occasion for old times sake, but the toxicity there is hard to take.

David

David Ross wrote:The 7200rpm Hitachis don't have the best track record. (I say this having just ordered a new machine containing one.)

Ken Fox wrote: Thanks, hopefully you have deserted a.c. by now (for your own sake, that is)

I stlil check in on occasion for old times sake, but the toxicity there is hard to take.

David

Hi David,

I've had good luck with the 7200rpm Hitachis, having owned approximately 15 of them, beginning with when they first came out (with 60gb IDE as the maximum capacity) and this being the first failure I've personally experienced. The drive is in fact defective and any utility I've tried on it, even imaging software, finds a bad sector or otherwise crashes. IBM is sending me out a new drive today by overnight UPS. Thanks for your suggestion; your diagnosis was correct.

I did succeed in making a tib image file of the drive, omitting one sector, and assuming it is the file that crashed the antivirus programs, I could replace that if missing. Otherwise I do have an ancient image of that drive from 4 months ago that I could use, or I could use an image from a similar machine I have and adapt it.

You are right; the noise to signal ratio on ac is about as high as I have ever experienced on any internet venue.

Cheers,

David Ross wrote:The 7200rpm Hitachis don't have the best track record. (I say this having just ordered a new machine containing one.)


David

In follow up, the defective hard drive was in fact a SEAGATE. As I wrote before, I left the original drive that came with the system in the machine so only saw what it was (granted, I could have figured this out without removing the drive) after I took it out today. The replacement drive sent by IBM is a previously used Hitachi drive (did not say refurbished but did indicate it had been used before, on the packaging), a 7K200, that was manufactured in the last 2 months. So far it appears to be working ok.

I was able to clone the old drive over with some effort using EZ GigII. I ran chkdsk on it a couple of times which found errors which have apparently been fixed. So far there are no problems. I'll see in the next couple of days if there are any unexpected problems with the clone in which case I'll need to restore an old disk image and update it to the present.

Ken Fox wrote:In follow up, the defective hard drive was in fact a SEAGATE.

In case this comes in handy in the future, if you have a Seagate or Maxtor drive connected to a machine, either inside or by USB or pcmcia, you can use a free download of Seagate Diskwizard to clone the drive; this is an OEM version of Acronis. I don't know how this compares to EZ Gig, but Acronis is a favorite of many TP owners, and the price can't be beat.

David Ross wrote:

Ken Fox wrote:In follow up, the defective hard drive was in fact a SEAGATE.

In case this comes in handy in the future, if you have a Seagate or Maxtor drive connected to a machine, either inside or by USB or pcmcia, you can use a free download of Seagate Diskwizard to clone the drive; this is an OEM version of Acronis. I don't know how this compares to EZ Gig, but Acronis is a favorite of many TP owners, and the price can't be beat.

Hi David,

I was aware of the existence of that Seagate program. EZ GigII is (yet) another OEM version of Acronis True Image which came bundled with a USB-SATA and IDE disk adapter. So I used essentially the same program for cloning. None of the cloning programs in my experience works 100% of the time so you have to test the resulting clone to be sure that errors weren't made in the cloning process.

I am back to AVG 8.0

It scans for spyware which is a plus, and Avira does not. In addition, Avira has a very annoying screen hawking their paid version, which shows up on each reboot and which must be manually closed. There is no configuration option that I could find to turn it off.

I uninstalled it and am back to AVG Free. Having replaced the defective hard drive which prompted my initial post on this thread, I have no real issues with AVG that I can't put up with.