Compare Anti virus programs please

Avast and PC Tools Free Anti-Virus: Any comments about relative reliability
would be appreciated. Among the many
web sites offering comparisons of A/V programs, which would you advise is or
are the most accurate? TIA,
--
RobF
Address anti-spammed

"RobF" in <news:hvsak.11519$F97.11221@newsfe18.lga> wrote:

> Avast and PC Tools Free Anti-Virus: Any comments about relative reliability
> would be appreciated. Among the many
> web sites offering comparisons of A/V programs, which would you advise is or
> are the most accurate? TIA,

http://www.av-comparatives.org/

I've never bothered to keep records on memory consumption by various AV
programs. My recollection on just a few that I recall right now is:
Symantec was largest (not the suite, just the AV), McAfee was smaller
(just the AV, not the suite), CA EzAntivirus was small (but a flaky AV
with poor coverage), AVG was okay until version 8 (even after
uninstalling and custom installing without Linkscanner), and Avira and
Avast were close and small. Impact regarding the host's responsiveness
was a bit different: McAfee was worse (only because of its updates while
I was using the host), Symantec next, never felt an impact from updates
to CA, and AVG, Avira, and Avast are about the same (once you get rid of
their update notifications although, as I recall, Avira would let you
schedule when to do the updates to prevent doing them while you were
using your host).

Avira is rated as having top coverage but it also has more false
positives. You can waste a lot of time researching a false positive
before coming to an educated conclusion that it was a false positive.
It almost devolves into nagware with its prompt to buy their product
except you can prevent the avnotify.exe program from running (which is
their nag) along with getting rid of its bulletin window on loading.

Avira has 2 exclusion lists of which one is for the on-demand scanner
and the other is for the on-access or real-time scanner (a pain to
manage 2 separate whitelists). With Avast, you get an exclusion list
only for the on-demand scanner (there is a way to exclude for the
on-access scanner but it is very clumsy and hidden). Avast can be
scheduled to run a boot-time scan so it runs before malware has a chance
to load (which may still load in Safe Mode). It also keeps a hash of up
to 3 versions of a file in its integrity database to make easier the
repair or disinfection of files rather than rely of heuristics in
determining how to slice up the file to get rid of the pest.

With Avira, you can specify when to schedule an on-demand scan. Avast
doesn't let you schedule on-demand scans and it doesn't include the
ashCmd utility to provide for full configuration of a scan. It only
comes with ashQuick which is the Windows Explorer extension used to scan
files/folders. You can schedule an on-demand scan using ashQuick using
the Windows Task Scheduler but you can only specify which drives to
scan. When a pest is found, the scan is interrupted until you return to
your computer rather than complete the entire scan and then wait for
your return to take action on the suspect files.

In the latest history on my host, I had AVG but left to go to Avast. I
then wanted to use Avira because I needed an exclusion list that would
be honored by the on-access scanner; otherwise, you have to disable
Avast while using the false positive program during which you remain
vulnerable to infection and have to remember to renable Avast afterward.
However, the host's response was just noticeably impacted with Avira
although it is possible that it was in combination between it and the
Online Armor firewall. I went back to Avast. Alwil has been quick (a
couple days) to update their signature database when you report a false
positive, so I'll either disable Avast for the false positive program
while using it or try the not-easy-to-use and not-easy-to-find method of
adding the program to the on-access scanner's exclusions (but then this
comes back to managing 2 whitelists which was a pain also in Avira).