Posted by: Ben
on May 20, 2010
Are you one of those people that still have Norton popping up on your computer every time you turn it on asking you to activate your 60 day trial? Maybe you actually did activate your trial and then purchased the license because everyone knows you don't want to be on the internet without some form of protection against viruses. You could just be the person who is trying to take an active stance on protecting your computer and data by searching out the best anti-virus solution, but you really are just not sure which one to get. You may be one of those that thinks, you get what you pay for, so any that are free would not be good enough and the more you spend the more you are protected. Well I hope to clarify some things about a few of the different available anti-virus solutions that are out there and hopefully provide information that you can base your decision on when it comes time to protect your computer.
The following anti-virus products were tested:
- Avast (Free Version - 5.0.545)
- AVG (Free Version 9.0.819)
- Avira (Free Version 10.0.0.567)
- BitDefender (Anti-virus 2010 Trial Version 13.0.21.347
- Comodo (Free Version 4.0.141842.828)
- Kapersky (anti-virus 2010 Version 9.0.0.736)
- McAfee (Enterprise Paid Version 8.7i)
- Microsoft Security Essentials (Version 1.0.1961.0)
- Norton (Internet Security Trial Version 17.6.0.32)
- Trend Micro (Internet Security Trial Version 17.50.1647)
Each product was installed on a virtual machine with Windows XP Professional SP3 and all available updates at the time of the first product test. Then the latest versions of the following software was also installed:
- Adobe Reader
- Java
- Adobe Flash
All tests were web based from 50 different links in five categories all gathered from www.malwaredomainlist.com. The catagories were as follows:
- Trojan
- Java
- PDF
- Fake Antivirus
- Flash
I will show how each product blocked the virus (if at all) through one of the following ways:
Posted by: Ben
on Feb 04, 2010
In a lot of cases you contract viruses through surfing the internet or in email attachments. A lot of these, if noticed immediately, can be removed in a couple easy steps. I will give a brief description on these steps below but before I do so I need to make a little disclaimer.
Disclaimer: The following information is provided only as such and in no way guarantees that in using the the information as described will remove any and all viruses or protect you from such. Information should be used at your own risk and I take no responsibility if personal data is lost or corrupted or any other unforeseen problems arise from using the information below.
System Restore
Windows system restore will periodically take what is called "snapshots" of your system. For instance if you install a program such as Microsoft Office onto your computer Windows will take a picture of what your system and associated files looked like before the program was installed. The reason that this is done is so that if a file that was changed caused issues with the way your computer functioned then you can choose to return to the "snapshot" or the current state the computer was in before the program was installed. This does so without deleting personal files and documents like music, pictures, email, etc.
Now say you were just surfing the web and somehow a virus has managed to install itself onto your machine and you start getting warnings from your current virus protection (if you have one) or you just somehow become aware of a possible infection. You can use System Restore to go back to a previous time that day or even a previous day (if available). To do this you will need to go to Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> System Restore. From there you will choose the recommended restore point or the option to choose a different time and date. You computer will restart during the process and let you know when it is done. Then check to see if you notice any signs of the virus and if so try picking an earlier time and date.