Alain wrote:
> Now to find another one that DON'T stay in memory and only scan when I 
> ask it to.

Install avast AV, then go into the control panel and set the services to 
"manual".  You may need to go back and re-set the services to manual 
after you update the executable.  But it lets you do an on-demand scan 
as you need it.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

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Warp wrote:
> Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
>> The 4 to 7 years old files where detected as virus less than 3 months old :-(
> 
>   Well, some executable virii infect files without modifying any of their
> dates, so in theory it's possible they are infected.
>   (Nowadays it's rarer, though, because most virii are of the independent-exe
> style and don't even bother infecting individual files.)

I'm told in the old days, virii tried to actually, like, *hide* 
themselves and stuff.

It seems these days their job is just to infect as many PC as possible 
by emailing themselves to everybody within 50 feet with a blank email 
containing CLICK_THIS.SUE_NAKED.GIF.GIF.EXE and then act as spam relay 
bots...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Alain wrote:
>

>
> Symantec is the product we're migrating off. My PC at work has something
> called Trend Micro. (Ever heard of that one? I hadn't.)


your system, is actually causing more havoc than any virus. Most of these

that these products, which are heavily marketed and generally trusted, are
failing in the most fundamental ways.

The 2007 version of Trend Micro seems to include a bug that slows down system
performance seriously on any PC. Several friends and colleagues were
complaining about extremely long boot times (up to 20-25 minutes) and generally

the RAM. In all cases this involved Trend Micro P-Cillin 2007 which I
uninstalled and replaced with Avast or F-Prot and every single one got back to
normal performance.

This performance problem seems to show up gradually, that is immediately after
installing TM everything is o.k., only after a certain amount of automatic
updates the problem starts.

My advice is stay away from these products, at least for now, until they have
fixed whatever the problem may be. I found out by searching the Internet that
people worldwide are having the same problem and no support or bug fix seems to
be available from this company, at least last time I checked.




of times. Just remember to keep the speaker volume down. :-)

Another common problem, make sure you only have ONE AV software installed at the
time. Having two or more is a killer on any PC.

Hildur

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Warp nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2008/01/01 10:46:
> Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
>> The 4 to 7 years old files where detected as virus less than 3 months old :-(
> 
>   Well, some executable virii infect files without modifying any of their
> dates, so in theory it's possible they are infected.
>   (Nowadays it's rarer, though, because most virii are of the independent-exe
> style and don't even bother infecting individual files.)
> 
>> Now to find another one that DON'T stay in memory and only scan when I ask it to.
> 
>   Most AV software for Windows feel like a virus themselves: It's incredibly
> difficult to get rid of them (without uninstalling them completely). They
> will "infect" your entire system.
> 
Old virus, in the old DOS days actualy injected themself into executables. 
Modern virus inject themself into the OS by adding files that are the viran code 
and planting hooks to start those files.
AVG detected several files as infected while they where completely legitimate 
and healty.
Some samples of false positives:
AddAware 2007 (straight from lavasoft.de)
wbload.dll (main WindowBlinds file, straight from the developer's site)
skyrocket.scr (a 5 years old screen saver)
ares.exe (ares galaxy) while not finding anything wrong with the installer.

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
"If you see me running, try to keep up."
       ...Back of bomb technician's shirt

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Alain wrote:
> AVG detected several files as infected while they where completely 
> legitimate and healty.

It can nuke your quickbooks (or quicken, I forget which) if you set it 
to the highest paranoia level, too. Fixed with a full reinstall without 
dataloss, tho - always know where you put the install disks for your 
software. :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

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> your system, is actually causing more havoc than any virus. Most of these

> that these products, which are heavily marketed and generally trusted, are
> failing in the most fundamental ways.

I've seen my share of problems with *Norton* products. [Those things 
really do take over your entire PC! And fail to uninstall, frequently...]

However, Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition seems to be an entirely 
different animal. If a corporate product popped up windows every 20 
seconds saying "hey, you didn't do a full scan today" or "hey, shall I 
update my definitions now?", it would be chucked out. *This* product is 
about as unobtrusive as you could imagine for an AV product. I literally 
hardly know it's there...

PS. Note that I have absolutely no *choice* in this matter anyway. :-S

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v7 nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2008/01/02 13:17:
>> I´ve seen several instances where the AV, which is supposed to be 
>> protecting
>> your system, is actually causing more havoc than any virus. Most of these
>> instances have included products from Symantec or Trend Micro. I´m 
>> sorry to say
>> that these products, which are heavily marketed and generally trusted, 
>> are
>> failing in the most fundamental ways.
> 
> I've seen my share of problems with *Norton* products. [Those things 
> really do take over your entire PC! And fail to uninstall, frequently...]
> 
> However, Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition seems to be an entirely 
> different animal. If a corporate product popped up windows every 20 
> seconds saying "hey, you didn't do a full scan today" or "hey, shall I 
> update my definitions now?", it would be chucked out. *This* product is 
> about as unobtrusive as you could imagine for an AV product. I literally 
> hardly know it's there...
> 
> PS. Note that I have absolutely no *choice* in this matter anyway. :-S
> 
It's fundamentaly the same, only that the corporate edition is less visible when 
cloging the system. It just don't anoy you with all those useless popups. It 
does the full scans and updates on scedule, behind the scene without telling 
you, but it adds some entries in a log file.

The reasoning is that the home user "need" to know that the AV is there and 
doing it's job. OTOH, the business used need to NOT know that the AV is there, 
as it's the job of the IT department and system manager.

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
Fundamentalism: Shit must be born again.

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Alain wrote:

> It's fundamentaly the same, only that the corporate edition is less 
> visible when cloging the system. It just don't anoy you with all those 
> useless popups. It does the full scans and updates on scedule, behind 
> the scene without telling you, but it adds some entries in a log file.

Indeed, it's so fundamentally the same that it doesn't even use the same 
virus definition files. Oh, wait...

Also, I have yet to see it try to do a full scan. I could configure it 
to do so, but this isn't even the default configuration, and I have no 
intension of setting it to do this.

It seems to me the major difference between the home and corporate 
versions is that in the corporate one, the administrator gets to 
*decide* what the software should do. (And, as I've written, it doesn't 
seem to be anywhere near as resource-hungry.)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:

> I've seen my share of problems with *Norton* products. [Those things
> really do take over your entire PC! And fail to uninstall, frequently...]
>


informed of this when trying to uninstall the software. A funny way to keep a
customer.

To uninstall you need to download and run a special -uninstall software- from


After uninstalling you are still stuck with the uninstall software on your hard



installed. People -thought- they already had gotten rid of *Norton* when they
installed another AV. Those machines run in slow mo.... like cutting through
syrup.

Hildur

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them labeled -Norton Antivirus-. After a few weeks of playing with my new toy I
naively decided to install the NAV, just to be one the safe side, even though I


Guess what! My hard drive got wiped out completely in an instant. I had to take
the PC back to the shop and get it reformatted and the OS reinstalled. They



Later I heard rumors about some unhappy programmer at Symantec, planting a virus

this was the reason I got my hard drive wiped, but this experience made me not
trust this brand name ever again. If true, they must have had a hard time
silencing the rumor.

But it makes you think, what kind of software wipes out you hard drive in matter


(I think I still got the old NAV CD lying in a box somewhere. Maybe I should
scan it for viruses, just for the fun.)




they actually worked.

Hildur

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