I know there is a thread about virus scanners already, but it is hard to tell which virus scanner most HA users want/like/have ?

eTrust EZ Antivirus

only 4mb and doesn't take over ur system like some antivirus proggies

Norton Antivirus

Why don't you have Norton and MacAfee on that list? I would imagine that they are still the two most popular. Oh and don't get me wrong I am not saying they are the best, I wouldn't have any clue as to what is the best antivirus software where I stopped using it 3 years ago (and I haven't got a single virus in all that time).

Really sorry for now including norton and maccafee on the list. The poll only allows 10 options so I has to delete two. I just deleted the last two and they happened to be norton and maccafee

However, what I am really interested in is, which virus scanner you want to have? If you had money to spend on a decent one!

WEll im a field service technician so i get to see lots of nasty bugs and from my experience, ive had the best luck with norton antivirus. Alot of the other scanners mentioned i must admit ive never heard of so im coming from the common consumer perception of norton vs. mcaffe and i can say with certainty that norton is a superior product to its counterpart. Ive seen mcaffe blatantly miss things that norton caught which gives it a pretty big advantage right out of the box. Also norton is really good about taking care of itself as far as updating goes. A typical mcaffe installation requires atleast 70 cumulative patches right out of the box, and on a dialup connection this can take up to an hour and a half to download, versus norton which you can usually bring up to date in about 20 minutes even on a dialup.

But then i wont go into my conspiracy theory on how i think symantec writes most of these viruses anyway for obvious reasons, i base this on the fact that symantec generally seems to have a fix almost immediately after most viruses are discovered but i digress.

AVG

It's free and works!

This thread is pretty pointless. The other thread discusses which is the best virus scanner. Now you want to know which is the most popular, i guess, but why? Some very popular scanners aren't included, and also, "most popular" doesn't tell you if it's good or not (refer to first thread).

Norton Antivirus is what I currently use.

But if I wanted one from that list, I'd choose F-Prot (hence I voted for it)

Me too!

It's simple.
and...
FREE!

I voted for "Others"
It's a virus scanner called "Common Sense".
Use it and you don't need a virus scanner.

Isn't that a bit risky?

A virus scanner is no replacement for common sense, but it will be good backup when you make that one mistake that leads to a virus getting on your system. And everyone makes mistakes from time to time.

Personally I use AVG, and have recommended it to friends and relatives who have asked about virus scanners.

Norton Antivirus is used from time to time for a full scan or on suspicion.
"Common sense" is what I use the rest of the time.

Avast Antivirus Home Edition + a good deal of Common Sense™.

Do any of these virus scanners work on Windows 2003?

Three years since I have used a virus scanner. Total files infected on my system since then ZERO. I am pretty confident that win update, common sense and disabling possible 'virus friendly' services in windows is all that you need to do.

Windows 2003 (AKA .NET) is only stripped and fixed version of XP, so all anti-virus programs should work.

I'm pretty certain Common Sense is crossplatform. :B

I originally thought this was the case but unfortunately due to some form of fascism back at symantec this is not true. I tried installed NAV 2003 on w2k3 and was met with an obnoxious popup stating that it refused to work on this version of windows and i needed to go out and buy the version that they priced under the assumption that it would be a tax write-off for big corporations. Dunno about the competitors, but You need Norton Antivirus Corporate edition if you want your butt covered on any of the server flavors of windows. Of course i would not be surprised if there is a workaround for this but i didnt care enough to do the research.

i was last hit by a virus about 10 years ago, started using virus scanners (manual), did a study on virus and wrote one on my own (didn't release though, hehe), so i know what to expect from virus now. i did try out some persistant scanners, but those take up way too much system resources so at the end i spent most of the last 9 years without a virus scanner and never been infected. occasionally, i may install any manual scanner to do a full system scan or to scan a suspicious file which i need to open, maybe once or twice in a year, but i will probably never run a persistant scanner. for a manual scanner, any one would do since you don't need much bells and whistle for that.

but really, except for he self propogating exploit worms (which you should be patching against regularly), virus today are not as sophisticated as the ones you find 10 years ago. virus these days are all about social engineering and convincing silly people to run executables or scripts. common sense works better today than it did years ago....

NOD32

I also use Common Sense.

I have a hardware firewall, I always install critical security patches, I don't open executable e-mail attachments (unless I can verify it with the sender) and I don't use Outlook or Outlook Express.

Anybody who practices safe computing can live without a virus scanner, IMHO.

I wish alot of anti-virus software had Common Sense built into it. Some of it must be made using the DumbAss Detection Engine.
My prime example being during the testing of RAV it started pissing me off with false positive's seeing any of my batch files with Deltree /Y as a BAT virus.

EDIT: Removed the ™, it made some text run off screen.

Some real fake viruses to test your antivirus protection (but not your common sense):

http://www.phreak.org/archives/The_Collect...ction/live_vir/
If you try to download those files, you should get a virus alert. But don't run them.


http://www.eicar.org/anti_virus_test_file.htm
Follow the instructions.

I have an old version of Norton Antivirus (with updated signatures) that I use only to spot-check downloaded files or folders... otherwise, I'll occasionally do a complete scan on the Web with the http://housecall.trendmicro.com site. Haven't had a virus-infected PC in about 15 years.

My Common Sense™ still works properly, last virus I've had was some DelWin from old games copied from 286 (Larry series).
Haven't had any antivirus software back then. I've detected it and fixed when I ran old ThunderByte AV trial.

/EDIT\
I forgot about minor (<1000 files) Chernobyl+Marburg infection 2 years ago,
while I was switching AntiVirus programs from Sophos to AntiViren Toolkit Pro.
Probably downloaded something from the net.
\EDIT/

I must say that i learned my lesson the hard way. It must've been 4 or 5 years ago when i downloaded the latest version of some program. Now, usually i scanned everything i downloaded (as i still do, although i automated it), but since this software has always been virus-free, i didn't do it. Turned out it was infected with a virus whose name i forgot (was popular at the time), i had to format the disk to get rid of it (can't stand the thought to work with a "halfway fixed" system anyway). Funny enough, the website i got it from went offline soon after. Trust is good, control is better.