i currently use norton professional anti virus

i have been advised i am better off using AVG free anti virus. is this correct. which do you reccomend and is the free one better or just as good as the ones you pay for?

Hi Lady Day, I have found the Nortons is pretty useless these days, I have done away this and started to use Zone Alarm and I must say so far so good.

I would suggest the Zone Alarm Suite which includes Firewall, Virus Checker and other little goodies

I'm not sure about the free ones, I remember a few of my friends using these software and it played havoc with their machine... but hey nothing venture, nothing gained.

@ menzer

I have norton, it detected and removed a virus for me the other day, and it goes through a one button checkup 2-3 times a mth. What do u mean when u say it is useless, in what way? I had the zone alarm for all of 10mins and I had to get rid of it. It kept popping up asking me about this file and that file, I couldn't understand what the files were and I didn't know what I was saying yes or no to.

thanks menzer, what about the avg anti virus?

The reason why Zone alarm would keep popping up is usually because something is trying to either access the internet or access your machine, so to protect you from hackers and backdoor programs which make you machine vunerable,Zone alrm give the the oppotunity to either decline or accept, if you have Zone Alarm in learning mode it will eventually reduce the amount of times it pops up.

I installed Zone Alarm about amonth ago and already it has block 51,000 suspected intrusions - 551 being highly dangerous.

I don't get any of those popups that much, anymore, as Zonealarm now knows what I want and what I don't want.

Please bare in mind that if you have the Zone Alarm suite, it is a firewall and virus checker.

If you have Nortons Virus protection you are not protected from the dreaded worms etc.

I have even tried nortons Internet Security and found that to be useless too.. also it would slow down my machine..

I agree with Menzer, I had Norton Antivirus 2004, and it does nothing as far as I am concerned. Infact, it slows down my pc, and I Had no option but delete it completely from my system. What a waste of time and space, they are only selling thename, norton antivirusis crap.

Anyway, I am using Mcafee Antivirus, so far so good. I don't know much about AVG, but it should be alright, but i wouldn't imagine it could work like mcafee.

@All agree with Mentzer and Saint. The sister could be lucky and her system agrees with Norton. But I had a nightmare experience that opened my eyes to the software world. Bought the 2004 update. For some reason kept on rejecting it, followed the instructions for that eventuality and only god knows what happened there. Because my techy bredrin who knows his stuff and I have never heard of that man being defeated by anything. He came down to make sure I was doing it right.

Given I had installed the stuff in the first instance. Knew I was not turning fool. People, Norton almost mash up my whole system. The thing went mental and kind of unbalanced my whole system and still did not work.

After about 5 days of ongoing attempts my man managed to get me up and running. But what really shocked me was trying to use Symetecs customer care and support facilities.

I was absolutely shocked. Circles within circles, ansaphone to ansaphone. Absolute nightmare. Can you imagine I had a day left before my Norton expired when I downloaded the update and in between all the madness experienced on that day, I got infected with every kind of virus known to man including plague.

Never again.

FBconfused3

So Nortons for the bin.. or recycle bin then?

I think Nortons is more of an advisory company... their online information is great but as for their software, it has gone down hill....

I would not be surpise if Nortons had a hand in spreading most of the virus's out there.. in order to boost sales and share prices?

After spending £40 odd on this Norton thingybob a few months ago Im getting angry listening to you guys talk. It hasnt given me any problems yet but now I feel like someone took me for a dummy. Im not keen on spending a next £40 on some next thing but dont wanna be at risk from the worm evil worms thingys....

What exact problems did you have with Norton and how long did it take for them to manifest themselves? How will I recognise the problems?

I give you an example DM, the other day before i moved to Zone Alarm... I had a virus called Redlof.A... Can you beilieve this madness....

Nortons would not remove it, and it would not let me do anything atlot with my computer until the virus was removed, I press delete the file, quarantine the file and it would just say access denied... I spent a day on the internet believing I needed a tool to remove this virus, I even posted the Redlof Removal tool in this forum somewhere (which only does half the job)... I was absolutely livid... I could not believe Nortons did not deal with the Redlof.A virus...

Anyway... I said let me experiment with something else, and that's where zone alarm suitecame into play.. check this... Installed the new Suite, did a scan and Boom deleted all infected files, machine was on fire :P

If Nortons is working well for you then fine.. I was just giving my experience, same with Fred and Saint...

To answer your question... (How will I recognise the problems?
) you'll know when you've been tango - lol

@ Ladyday, re: AVG.. have not tried it...

How much does the Zone alarm thingycost?



*wincing*

Don't jump coz I jump... if it is looking after your machine and you are so far happy with it then fine.... Make sure you got a firewall to go with it...

Zone Alarm is around $40 dollars online... but it's free if your down with freeware ;-) *wink wink*blkdrinker

i use nortin anti virus and it slows down my system, wbhen i had the firewall aswekl my system was mega slow.

recently my friend was using norton and switched to avg, avg found over 100 viruses on his pc.

i would just like to know which is the best anti virus and firewall to use. as i dont use adsl i would prefer something i can just put a disc in to install. but if the inline iones work better please say so