Is your server being hammered by AVG8?

Dumped AVG8 last week, and this seems to work

martin

I like Avira, been using it for a couple of years. I recently signed up for this

Get a 6 month free licenses of avira premium for free.

The advantage being you get the faster update servers and no ad popping up every day

"JeffM" skrev i en meddelelse news: snipped-for-privacy@u6g2000prc.googlegroups.com...

Next is to tarpit the buggers - make the poor sap using AVG wait for a looooong time along with the nigerians. Or maybe BOFH at some backbone could route traffic to/from avg's domain across some wonky modem line.

AVG8 is advertising itself as IE. I say run all IE users through the tarpit until they learn a lesson and start using a better browser.

--
Paul Hovnanian	paul@hovnanian.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Have gnu, will travel.

I've been running avast.

I recently switched from AVG8 to Avast 4.8 Home. It's amazing to see how responsive my PIII/933MHz W2K is without AVG loaded. It is especially evident loading web pages full of URL's such as a Google search result with 50 results per page and not having LinkScanner running.

A crude comparison of AVG and Avast timing is how long it takes to scan 42.1 GBytes of junk on the HD. AVG 7.5 Approx 3 hours AVG 8.0 Approx 8 hours in "Auto" mode. AVG 8.0 Approx 6 hours in "Fast" mode. Avast 4.8 45 minutes.

Avast also seems to have a feature that disappeared in the transition from AVG 7.5 to 8.0. It clearly indicates that it is scanning, even in the background. That's important as users want to know WHY their machine has suddenly experienced a major performance hit.

It's really difficult to complain about free software. I get what I pay for, which in this case is nothing. So, on to the next program, where my total investment is the time to transition perhaps 200 machines from AVG8 to Avast 4.8. I gotta do some more testing, but so far, it looks like a winner.

Fun test: Try to download all 4 files on this page:

You should get a virus warning. It doesn't prove much, but is useful for testing if the virus scanner is paying attention.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Avast has a boot time scan you can schedule from the menu - a good feature I think

IanM

Are they safe to download? The warning is sort of scary.

...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
|                                                                |
|          Obama-lackey! Obama-lackey! Boom! Boom! Boom!         |
|                                                                |
| Obama-lackey Wesley Clark opines:"He (McCain) hasn\'t held exe- |
| cutive responsibility.  I don\'t think riding in a fighter plane|
| and getting shot down is a qualification to be president."     |
|                                                                |
| But being a small potatoes politician who\'s served only three  |
| years in the Senate does ???                                   |

Due to excessive spam, gmail, googlegroups, UAR, AIOE are blocked!

Yes. All they are is a file that has a text string inside. The text string is detected as a virus. There's no actual virus. The idea is to check if your virus scanner is working. Note the file sizes. It's kinda difficult to write a functional virus in 68 bytes of code.

However, I think you might find that your virus scanner will later dump them in the "virus vault" or "quarantine" if you save them to your hard disk.

Of course, if you insist on using the real thing for ummm.... testing, you can build your very own personalized virus using code from:

or other sites. Think of the notoriety of having a virus names after you.

Also, if you're into computer paranoia, try testing if your router is susceptible to various exploits:

Some of the more ancient routers (e.g. BEFW11S4 v4) will hang on some of the tests. The tests are safe but be prepared to power cycle your router.

As for the warnings, they were probably written by attorneys. Their job description includes terrorizing readers with ominous but vague threats. I don't think attorneys know if attorneys are able to communicate in any way other than ominous threats.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

All I get is a NAV /!\\, "File could not be downloaded"

...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
|                                                                |
|          Obama-lackey! Obama-lackey! Boom! Boom! Boom!         |
|                                                                |
| Obama-lackey Wesley Clark opines:"He (McCain) hasn\'t held exe- |
| cutive responsibility.  I don\'t think riding in a fighter plane|
| and getting shot down is a qualification to be president."     |
|                                                                |
| But being a small potatoes politician who\'s served only three  |
| years in the Senate does ???                                   |

Due to excessive spam, gmail, googlegroups, UAR, AIOE are blocked!

Is NAV = Norton Aunty Virus? If so, it's doing the right thing and preventing you from downloading a virus.

You might be able to trick it into letting you download the test file by using: IE6 and IE7 = Right click -> Save Target As... Firefox = Right click -> Save Link As... Hmmm.... Avast won't allow it to be saved. I had to disable the "web shield" in order to save the files. No clue how NAV works.

You can have the virus test file emailed to you:

I haven't tried all the various forms of MIME, compression, and ecapsulation, but so far, my ISP's virus scanning firewall has blocked everything I've tried.

How to use the EICAR test file:

How the file works:

Fun with the EICAR test file in MASM:

Playing with viruses is almost as much fun as playing with matches.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

I had to switch a client to FF3 because IE was just dog slow on his system. He was amazed how fast FF3 runs on his system. It's quite something.

Mention has be made of how the pre-fetching could endanger an AVG user's freedom:

Again: If you drag & drop the links onto the same tab/page, that's best.

Another of Grisoft's bad habits has been mentioned:

Here's the big news: A site that focuses on broadband news & information

) started a campaign against Grisoft, recommending that people uninstall AVG and find another AV.

Grisoft took a powder:

The brain-dead version has been pulled and the "feature" will no longer be included.

[snip]

Are you happy with it?

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at

| 1962 |

America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

Due to excessive spam, gmail, googlegroups, UAR, AIOE are blocked!

I got tired of playing that game to find the free AVG file. Avast is free other than a registration hassle, and that is pretty simple. I run it on all my windows boxes. It didn't occur to me to check the CPU efficiency, but I did do a google search about two years ago that had information on comparing the effectiveness of various antivirus software, i.e. how well it found viruses, and periodically check how it currently ranks. Avast comes in at different levels over the years. Sometimes good, sometimes "standard", which is about as poor as they rank.,

You can check this source out:

I have one 64 bit box, so pretty much I need to run avast. And the price is right. ;-)