Sunday, July 15, 2012

SOFTWARE: AV, The A, B, E's

[Do NOT click on ANY LINK found in the comment section of this blog. No matter how innocuous the link MIGHT appear to be, it is MOST LIKELY SPAM or a link to MALWARE. I am disheartened by the need to do this, which accounts for the sparsity of posts this year.]

As I mentioned before, I was going to switch from using Avast! Pro Anti-Virus to BitDefender Anti-Virus Pro 2013 on my birthday Wednesday. I was tired of Avast!'s ceaseless hectoring to renew as much as anything. But I was also troubled by reports from Patrick of an issue on some machines that had Avast! on them when a Microsoft ordained update came down from on high. Like on this past Tuesday.

And naturally, my machine was pummeled in the aftermath. As the previous blog notes, my machine was soon bollixed up, I had to reformat and re-install. Was it Avast!"s fault? Maybe Microsoft's? Bad pairing? Or the vagaries of luck that accompanies publicly revealing your plans to ditch something? Who knows?

On to brighter and better AV products. Having dispensed with the A's (AVG and Avira before Avast!), I was moving onto the B's. BitDefender to be precise. I installed it on Saturday morning. Let it run on my machine for about 18 hours. And then UNINSTALLED it and sent nasty, bordering on rude, emails to the BitDefender people.

I assume from reviews that BitDefender works. And probably works for a lot of people. But in my system, with double, triple and quadruple redundant backup systems, the simplistic BitDefender failed. It went about deleting things it disliked. And it disliked lots of stuff it found disagreeable, include programs with installers for crapware that I'm smart enough to NOT install when I put them onto my computer. And by deleting, I mean, made to be gone, not to the Recycle Bin and NOT to a quarantined area. Without asking me so much as a question first. It even deleted a PAS file, which I WROTE and know NOT to be infected.

BitDefender is not for me. Small computer systems without much saved that MIGHT have lousy cookie installers? Sure. But for me, this was money sent down the toilet. And I still don't have full knowledge of what all the program made to poof while I was occupied elsewhere. And that meant deleting files from original source and then their backups. To say I really, really, really, really was mad was to underestimate my ability to go thermo-nuclear and still not burst blood vessels. Although, you know, my nose seems redder already.

Okay, onto the next candidate. I can't JUST rely on Windows Defender. If I try, Microsoft's Action Centre flag nags about needing to find an anti-virus product. Even goes to a helpful web page with tens of them. So say what you want about Defender, even Microsoft doesn't trust that it will do the job. (in a way, that allows me to claim a D in this alphabetic race to find a solution).

So, my NEW AV product is eSet Anti-Virus. I've recommended the web-site AV scan for people who suspect their computer has been compromised. But this is my first time actually trying the disk-based product. A 30-day trial. And so far, it looks like I might have found my new defender against the slimeware that is out there. But, it's on trial. And if the trial doesn't work, then it's on to MalwareBytes. I'll keep you posted.

Honest, I will.

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