I posted a detailed comment about NOD32 seeming to be involved in starting Data Execution Prevention crashes in Vista's windows Mail, but I made the mistake of referencing a Microsoft Knowledgebase article and a GBM blog item, which resulted in the comment being discarded as suspicious (as discussed in the forums although one gets a red message claiming that the comment is under review, it has in fact been discarded; I'd include the URL of that discussion except that would doom this comment).

In the future I will copy any message before posting and if it is discarded I will repost leaving out all the URLs.

I pray. Seems to work.

Actually, I use McAfee Enterprise, Windows Defender, and Windows Firewall. I have a Sonicwall hardware firewall on my home network as well.

I have no choice in using McAfee. My school requires you to use it in order to connect to their wireless network.

Recently, I have been using Avast!

Before that, I was using Windows Live OneCare, and I am debating between the two of them now.

I also have a Netgear hardware firewall/switch that handles the interface with the fiber connection coming into my house.

I use Avast on all my computers. I find that its footprint is not at all taxing to my UMPC. It also has features like a boot time scan and highly configurable real time scans of various sorts of internet traffic.

FYI, CNet gives Avast, AVG, and AntiVir all 5 stars but Avast has a slightly higher user rating.

I did alot of research when looking for a free anti-virus solutions. I spent quite a bit of time looking over detection tests done on all anti-virus providers, and out of all the free solutions, Avira Anti-Vir consitantly had higher detection rates than Avast and AVG. Avira was in the mid-90% range where AVG and Avast were in the mid-80's. These scans were run on files with thousands of viruses.
However ALL of them detected 100% of viruses on the Wild List, which is the list of viruses currently known to be in active circulation.

I use Symantec Anti-Virus (Enterprise version, which means nothing for how the client software works except I don't have to enter a serial number). I have no complaints - speed or otherwise. I also run the free version of Ad-Aware regularly.

As a recent convert from Mac to Vista, I can't believe the nonsense Windows users have to endure if they're connected to the internet. My life was so simple before I switched to Vista. Now I feel like I'm being punished - hence my choice of domain name. Ha! Obviously, I'm being punished for making such a stupid move. On the other hand, misery loves company. Happiness and peace-of-mind are over-rated.

Rock on!
peter

Also check out http://www.av-comparatives.org/ and look at the recent tests:
Retrospective/ProActive Test November 2007
On-demand comparative February 2008

I use NOD32 on my desktop, nothing on tablet as get. I really like the small foot print, well I never it hogging any resources. Its fast as far ASI can tell, and stays out of the way. One problem is be the massive number of unclear options, but some how works out of the box. Its a touch expensive at £40 a year, so may go With some thing else for the tablet.

My email is double-filtered, first by Symantec on Yahoo!, then by AVG Free locally. For passive spyware blocking, I have Spybot S&D and SpywareBlaster. Only infrequently do I run active scans with Spybot and Ad-Aware. My firewall is ZoneAlarm Free, plus my home router is firewalled. Main reason for all is free.

I use a combination of things, and tend to "do the friend install" of the same. I use AVG antivirus, although I have not yet done the upgrade to 8.0 as it install a BUNCH of additional stuff that I would like to de-select - which is certainly possible.

I also use and have used for years now, the webroot spysweeper spyware product. It works quite well and doesn't add a lot of overhead for CPU and RAM. I ALSO use spybot search and destroy and have for years. I find this multi-pronged approach works very well, no virii in five years and the impact is low, much lower than mcafee or norton (unless one uses the corporate versions which apparently have LESS impact)

AVG Free, Vista Firewall, A-Squared Free (Spyware removal), and Spyware Terminator (free) for passive and active protection against malwares. When a site is dangerous, your are alerted before access to the front page. A dedicated web page can give informations about this site (if you need only).

Yes, all these apps are free !

I use avast on all my windows machines, it auto updates and i have not had any problems with it for the past 4 years.

With vista i haven't use any third party firewall as of yet, Microsoft built in works for me.

As for XP i use Comodo Firewall, it auto-updates and is extremely configurable for the noob that i am.

What do you guys think of zonealarm? That's what I use. I've never heard of the solutions listed in your comments but I'm really interested.

On Linux - nothing.
On Vista - nothing.
On XP - Symantec corporate edition

AVG free + Webroot + Spybot S&D, all on XP Tablet. Ad-aware stopped working, even after several reinstalls.

Platform: Vista Ultimate on a X61T.

Symantec Antivirus Enterprise Edition 10.2 - Not entirely Vista compatible, but the antivirus works like a champ (and my company pays for it). Tried installing 11, which is supposed to be Vista compatible, but SMC.EXE kept crashing in a mode that required an incompatible-with-the-desktop alert dialog, requiring me to click the task bar to display an alert that a message was waiting, click yes, click another dialog to accept that SMC.EXE quit, then dismiss the special desktop using yet another dialog - only to have it crash again. You get the idea? I finally uninstalled 11 and went back to 10.2. MS is still making it very hard for experienced antivirus companies to field product. I mean, do you really want to rely on and trust MS Defender to watch dog security holes in MS Windows?

Mamutu - Pretty nice little oddity catcher. It alerts me when programs act in dangerous ways. Got it free through www.giveawayoftheday.com; it's good enough that I will pay of a license at the one-year renewal.

WinPatrol - Makes sure nothing surprising self-installs, both programs and IE helpers. Nice little program. I've used it for years with good results and no hassles. Highly recommended.

ZoneAlarm - Even though I usually operate ethernet and WiFi behind a hardware firewall, the cell modem doesn't. It's interesting how many programs "phone home." I use WinPatrol or Anvir Task Manager Pro to disable those things. NoteNot a perfect firewall solution - sometimes it inexplicably quits; very scary when that happens running on the cell modem.

AnVir Task Manager Pro - When the system starts acting strangely, I use this product to check the behavior and pedigree of all running programs and services. Haven't found any malware this way, but I certainly appreciated how it helped me spot crapware. Though I originally got it as a give away, I have since bought a license for the tool.

Windows Update - I set it to notify me of updates, rather than auto-install, but I take it seriously and read all the KBs to see if I really need them. I download on my schedule. There is nothing more annoying that needing to use the Internet on a slow wire when Windows is downloading updates in the background.

As an acolyte of the K0LO (Mark), I'm not using anything on one of my Vista machines. I'm using OneCare on another Vista machine and an XP machine. And just to round things out, I'm using ZoneAlarm on another XP machine. I also have a loaner Vista system that's running Norton (but that was out of my hands).

Our home router offers and advanced firewall and I think that's most of the protection that we need...

Kapersky anti-virus.
Very good value, consistently top rated in independent tests and resource low.

Combine with Vista in built firewall and Defender.

Works a treat! But all the above comments show what a good thing competition is in this sector.

NOD32 on my tablet, it is very small, very fast, you don't notice that it is runnig, it doesn't slow down the machine, and its GUI is well arranged

Comodo Firewall or Windows Firewall;Avira Antivir; Spyware Terminator is my preferred antispyware tool replacing Spysweeper; in the past I have tried Comodo BOClean and PC Tools Threatfire; two excellent and free anti-malware tools I can highly recommend are:
Secunia PSI
https://psi.secunia.com/
Hazard Shield
http://www.orbitech.org/

After having problems with Zone Alarm when i went to Vista, I tried windows onecare and I really like it. It integrates great with Vista and just simply works.

Kaspersky Anti-virus since 2003 on three tablets, dual-boot XP and Vista. Top-rated in every respect and best of all, 1 year licenses cost just $7.50 on eBay (legal resellers).

SpywareBlaster freeware blocks 10,000 bad sites without tax along with WinPatrol freeware as gatekeeper for changes in your control.

What kind of ZA problems did you have with Vista if I may ask? I guess my real question is can I dump ZA, use windows defender and firewall, and maybe Onecare and be okay. One thing I will say about ZA and I dont have experience with others so maybe they're the same, is that it does seem to pop up a lot of warnings. These on top of the normal Vista warnings can drive you a little crazy. I have ZA on my mothers desktop and my wifes as well and between the 2 of them I'm getting a lot of calls that go like this: "there's this thingy showing on my screen and it's red and I dont know what to do...."

i gave up on Symantec & Mcafee years ago, too resource intensive, and i don't want anything slowing doing my machine.

In that space i went with Zone Alarm, but in recent iterations that has become slow & buggy too.

At present i'm running Avast.
I like the fact that it is unobtrusive, and that it doesn't bog the machine down.

avg free on laptop and tablet, avast on desktop.
spyware blaster, spybot, lavasoft, windows firewall

I use AVG free and Windows Defender. But someone told me today that AVG free was going to be charging sometime this month. Anybody heard that? I really don't believe it, but you can never tell.

Nothing.

NOD32 after asking in the GBM forums what others use. I have been happy with it and it since the original virus software 90 day free ran out. They were the hardest company to get a hold of, so I asked in the GBM forums and was given good advice on NOD32. I now have it loaded on my desktop and on my tablet.

Nod32 All the way and never turned back!

I don't know how many years and how many machines I've used NOD32. It is fast and doesn't slow a system down. I rarely get viruses in email but it catches everything all the time especially when I am at meetings and we are swapping files like mad from memory sticks. This is more of a problem in India than in other locations I have noticed. I'm using Vista Business on a HP 2710p so the built in firewall and Windows Defender sort out the rest.

Running Vista on 3 Tablets and I do not use any anti-viruse software.

Doug

Defender
Firewall
PC Tools Antivirus
Threatfire

I'm running Vista Ultimate on an X61 Tablet with Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7.0, windows Firewall, and defender.

Clavain

Excellent topic! Rob. Never could be too much for basic survival knowledge. Thanks!

Very basic question: Anti-virus softwares are only to prevent infection or to also removed infected virus?

I also use Kaspersky (only Antivirus, not the whole kitten kaboodle) - not expensive, lightweight, and updates usually twice a day. I interned in the Marketing dept. at one of the larger IT security/ antivirus companies that constantly monitored the market (it wasn't Kaspersky ;) ), and in tests at av-tests.org or virusbtn.com, Kaspersky always scored well in terms of detection rate and update frequency. For business customers, the Kaspersky product range might be too small (I'd look at the big ones, like McAfee and Sophos, in that case), but since I only need antivirus, I went with Kaspersky.

@jlee: It depends. In general, your antivirus application will scan downloaded files and those files that other applications want to access in the background ("on access"). Also, you can usually right-click / select individual files to be checked. These two are to prevent an infection.
Thirdly, if you do a system scan - which can take a little while -, the antivirus will scan every file on your computer and check for suspicious characteristics. If it finds files that are already "infected" or suspicious, you have the option to remove them.

Nod 32, on Tablet and desktop at home, about 50 machines at work, and about 15 machines at my church.

JD,

Thanks for the insight and your personal experience info.

Are you specifically referring to Kaspersky only or in general to all anti-virus softwares?

I've had a good experience with AVG free edition, except that I picked up two viruses from (legit, not pirated) software installed in China that weren't detected until abt 6 months later each, so I don't know how long it takes foreign viruses to get in their virus definition library. Those were the only 2 viruses that ever got past AVG.

I wasn't using anything, but tons of out of date wordpress sites are getting hacked and giving out free worms...so I installed AVAST this week and really like it.

An interest link about a small company and cooperations of system builders, the big names and the real engine what they use:
http://www.virusbuster.hu/en/company/press/080415_partnerek_en

I forgot to speak about Spy the Spy i use. This freeware from Mediachance open a pop-up windows each time an app is being installed. Windows directory by default (and you see files progress) but you can add some folders. So you can make a log file or Move to quarantine really suspicious file.

Not really for beginners but esy to use.


http://www.mediachance.com/free/spythespy.htm

I use the FREE AVG products on all my Windows systems, they seem to do the trick and are not overloaded with bloatware like the Norton and Mcafee suites. I personally use a Mac for my day to day computing but being in the IT industry doing desktop support, I need to keep up on the Windows side.

@jlee: That was meant as a general statement. I have used Norton and G-Data, and Avira before and they all have that basic feature set.

Mark's experiment is very interesting and I would like to know abit more about his experiences, the pros and cons of his choice.

As a side note, one of our contractors stuck one his USB memory sticks into a workstation to transfere something. Unfortunately the memory stick was infected with some dubious piece of code (aka virus) and our contractor is now working for someone else.

Clavain

NOTHING....
After running AV software for years without every getting even a warning, I decided to not install when I upgraded to Vista. No issues whatsoever and I save the footprint an intrusion.

For my other family members I do install AVG; they are not as discriminating about what they click.

Clavain:

I've been running Vista without AV and AS software for only 4 months at the moment. So far, zero problems or issues. Remember that you are relying on Vista's improved security model so whatever you do, don't disable UAC! That's your first line of defense against malicious executable code.

Again, I would caution anyone against doing this unless you're willing to risk your machine in the interest of doing an experiment and you make frequent full-disk images as a means to recover.