Hi all,
I'm in the process of upgrading from Windows 2000 to Windows XP. In the past, I've exclusively used Symantec products for (software based) Firewall, Antivirus, and System Works (all 2003). I've used this suite for no other reason than they all seem to do their jobs. I wanted to make the best choices for Windows XP, and in doing alot of reading, have read conflicting reviews from XP users as to their effectiveness and some trouble (slow downs, etc) that they've caused to the XP OS. What I'm asking for are expert opinions (from whomever would care to contribute) on what the best (and safest to the XP OS)firewall, antivirus, and 'system works' for XP that are available on the market. (Is a hardware based firewall superior or desireable over a software based firewall)? I realize that so much of this is subjective, but would still value your opinions (and why you either do not trust, or rightfully endorse a product). For your pains, I'll award 500 pts. for whomever can reasonably convince me on the right product(s) to get for my new Windows XP. For sure, this is not an attempt to start a never ending discussion, or portray ambivalence but I'm very concerned about 'doing it right' this time around, and this info would be truly valuable to me. And what better place to get this info than from the best experts on the web? :)
Have a great day,
mr76
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Use this free online Trend Housecall scannner to find and clean every known virus:
http://housecall.trendmicr
Some viruses can't be removed by housecall. If so, use the free Trend Micro system cleaner:
http://www.trendmicro.com/
If you want to secure your workstation in the future, consider to purchase OfficeScan:
http://www.trendmicro.com/
Many Regards
Jorgen Malmgren
IT-Supervisor
Denmark
:o) Your brain is like a parachute. It works best when it's open
I use nortons 2002 for my antivirus i also have ontrack systemsuite 4.0 very good utilities program. It also has a antivirus program and i run it with nortons just had to set it to not scan email if you use both for your mail you will have trouble it comes with a firewall but you might want to look at blackice or zonealarm as crazy says its good but to get the one you can set up you have to pay if you want to use a hardwear firewall i have not heard of any problems using one with a softwear firewall but someone may say diffrent i just have a softwear one myself. The ontrack program is now with a company called V-COM http://www.v-com.com/ I am surprised crazy didnt include links to spybot search and distroy and adaware 6.0 do a search in google for them both free and good at what they do. Hope this helps good luck
>>>I am surprised crazy didnt include links to spybot search and distroy and adaware 6.0
I didn't about that. Hmmm I must of had a brain fart. :>)
spybot here
http://spybot.safer-networ
Download
http://spybot.safer-networ
AdAware
http://www.lavasoftusa.com
Hi
What is your computer going to be used for?
If you can't have a 'real' firewall, I'd highly recommend 'AtGuard' if you can get hold of a copy. I believe Symantec bought them out, but it's still out there. It allows for flexibility, as opposed to a blanket yes/no policy like ZA - ZA is awesome for gramma's computer, don't get me wrong, but you can't do anything with it. AtGuard has packet filtering down to port level, as well as an application filter (not highly recommended, but can be useful).
The problem with ZA and adaware is that they begin to tax your system resources in their attempt to keep you safe. Especially when they're multi-vendor applications (at least the Norton Suite is aware of itself...). Kind of biting your nose off to spite your face. AtGuard, while a little more complicated, just redirects packets as per your specifications. No extra weight.
>>>don't get me wrong, but you can't do anything with it.
Apparently you haven't uses their commercial version.
>>>Especially when they're multi-vendor applications
The biggest complaint that people have about suites is that it slows down there system. So I respectively disagree. I have tested on both sides of the fence and and I find using multi-vendor applications as you say isn't as taxing as a suite is.
Thanks so much everyone for contributing. I'm gaining some good insight here. To answer 'cale needs help' question, I'm using my computer for a plethora of tasks from Delphi programming to major surfing (newsgroups, experts-exchange, etc.) I also have two children who are on the brink of regular surfing. My concern over Firewalls stems from inheriting a Lithium.backdoor Trojan not too long ago, and Norton Antivirus was fairly quick to pick it up, but the Symantec 'solution' for nuking it out of the system ended up dicing the guts of my Windows 2000 OS. Subsequently, I had to reinstall IE to get any control panel elments to work again, and eventually reinstalled the whole OS due to new crashes, glitches, etc. that were not there before. Before that, Windows 2000 was solid as a Pontiac. I have to admit that Norton Personal Firewall did faithfully prevent two outbound attempts to my dipshit hacker/trojan friend at every bootup, but I could swear it slowed my system down after install (just a bit), and I got tired of having to customize inbound/outbound behaviors (via Personal Firewall) for every piece of my computer's pie that wanted to access the net. I'm not totally blaming Antivirus for my troubles as much as a (confirmed) mishandling of the posted Lithium fix. Interestingly enough, McAfee posted the correct fix, which I wish I would have known from the beginning. But the bottom line for me is...Antivirus can't ultimately be much better than the knowledgeable support of the company behind it. Symantec went down a notch for me over this one. On a side note, I checed out NPR's and USA Today's babe computer geek Kim Komando the other day, and one of her links gave some truly conflicting and disturbing user experiences of some of the better 'security' software in use (check it out at http://www.komando.com/rev
I'm sorry for rambling on, but thought a bit more background might be in order. Again, I value all I'm reading here and am grateful for your responses. I won't let this drag on indefinately, but will wait and read responses from all you experts for just a couple more days before awarding points and moving on.
Thanks Kindly everyone,
mr76
Just another note i have kids my wife using my machine also she had the klez virus show up in her email outlook express. one of them got opened and i was glad i had another antivirus running at the time because it attacked nortons but not the one with system suite. It contained it and didnt hurt my system easy to use softwear is important when you have other people using it.
As I already answered you should have used trend micro to solve your problem. As for the lithium backdoor which Norton could'nt help you with, read the solution and technical details
http://www.trendmicro.com/
Even if you don't buy Trend Micro's OfficeScan anti-virus-program, you can allways search for solutions on their site.
I used them for 3 years now, and have never lost a server or workstation.
You can also search for solutions on symantecs (Norton) site as well.
In my opinion for personal virus scanners I don't think Trend is any better than Norton and Independent test have bared this out year in and year out. Granted the OfficeScan grades out higher then Symantecs Cooperate or Enterprise versions but these aren't personal virus scanners but Enterprise solution and OfficeScan has minimum of 25 user license for almost $700.
I have used Norton for years at home and never had one single problem. But it is not a bad idea to have a seconday approach by maybe using one or all three of the following
Online Scanners
Norton Web Services
Go to this page and click on Scan for Viruses
http://security.symantec.c
It needs to download a few file so as to activate the scan so you may see a message like this.
"The Scan for Viruses uses an ActiveX program to scan your computer. The download is approximately 1.5MB and can take about 10 minutes over a 28.8 modem.
The scan can take more than 20 minutes depending on the speed of your computer and the number of files that you have. Please do not browse away from this page unless you intend to abort the scan.
Downloading Scan for Viruses controls. Please wait...
During the download, you might see one or more messages asking if it is OK to download and run these programs. Click Yes when these messages appear.
Note: Scan for Viruses does not scan compressed files"
======================
Trend Micro HouseCall
www.housecall.antivirus.co
"Trend Micro's free online virus scanner
In order to better serve our customers, we ask HouseCall users to register before scanning their computer. By registering, you will receive virus alerts from our team of Virus Doctors. You will be able to unsubscribe when you receive your first email. You can also scan without registering"
http://housecall.antivirus
======================
PC Pitstop Virus Scan
Our free Web-based virus scan uses Panda Software's award-winning technology and virus list. We're checking against the "wildlist," the roughly 200 viruses that are most prevalent in the world in a given month
http://www.pcpitstop.com/a
CRAZYONE..."OfficeScan has minimum of 25 user license for almost $700"
Sorry - I forgot - there's 2 solutions for workstations, OfficeScan for network (which I use) and PC-Cillin for single workstations (which I don't use)
You can purchase PC-cillin with builtin firewall for about $25
CRAZYONE..."but these aren't personal virus scanners but Enterprise solution"
Trend Micro uses the same patternfile for all there solutions from the free online housecall scanner, to their enterprise solution.
MR76 - heres a review of the best antivirus solutions:
http://www.cnet.com/softwa
Here are reviews for 2003 versions of several scanners and Norton tops the list.
http://www.pcmag.com/artic
Im my opinion it's a little overboard, but one of the most thorough and absolutely best avs and firewalls...check them out http://www.kaspersky.com/
If you download a bunch of .exe and such and are unaware of thier contents, use this program...Have many compressed files .cabs,.ace,.zip,.rar,.tar,
The expeirence i have had is...i had a bunch of files...scanned them with NAV..nothing...but i was suspicious...used Kaspersky....found 3....
Hope my input helps...
Hi everyone,
I so very much appreciate each and every one of your valuable insights and input. I'd love to take the points for this one and just spread it around to everyone who contributed. It would be nice to keep this question open for a while longer, but with all your help, I've come to a decision on where I'm going with security software.
Crazy One: Isn't Delphi just the coolest? I've recently been involved with custom Hospital software using Delphi 6 (can't wait to hop on 7) and SQL Server. Do you have lots of Delphi experience behind you? Have you succumbed to .Net yet?
Since everyone contributed so wonderfully, and I felt everyone deserved points, the award decision fell to bulk as well as content. Based on that, I can't help but award the points to Crazy One...but again, I really, really appreciate EVERYONE'S help.
Have a great summer!
mr76
I have been using Delphi since version 3. I have 3 years on the job experience. That job unfortunately I got laid off from because the owner could no longer afford to keep a programmer on staff. We were developing software for Travel Agencies specifically in the United States. Well that Industry has faltered considerably hence the reason I got laid off. I still do some programming to stay in practice. Currently using D5 but this weekend a freind of mine is getting me D7 as a gift.
I haven't done anything with .NET yet but D7 is suppose to be able to integrate with it. I will have to wait and see. .NET is here to stay. MS has put a lot of money and effort into it so I don't see it fading into the background for a long time to come. So eventually most of us programmers are going to need to learn how to deal with it. :>)
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by: CrazyOnePosted on 2003-04-29 at 09:57:31ID: 8421472
Well lets put this way XP has a built in firewall and is fairly good but not great. Personally I wouldn't use a program suite like System Works, although the 2003 version of it does get some very high marks from pundits in the industry. I would just use a firewall and and a Antivirus program. I use the free version of ZoneAlarm www.zonelabs.com and it has done its job quite admirably for all the years I have used it. The commercial version of it is more configurable then the free version.
Symantecs Norton Antivirus topped out as the number 1 all around best antivirus program in PC Magazines annual review of these products and has been rated number 1 for 4 or 5 straight years now. However the following virus scanner came in as a very close second
NOD32
http://www.nod32.com/home/
The Crazy One