Two virus guards...

quad_red

Hey all,
Just a quick question: My computer in work has TWO anti virus programs installed and running. AVG and Virus Chaser. They both auto-update every morning. I never really took any notice till Virus Chaser popped up and informed me that it had detected a trojan virus. It deleted it and everything appears to be ok. But this got me thinking....

Two virus guards won't interfere with one another will they? Should I get rid of one? (i have fully administrator control over this workstation so I could if I wanted).

Cheers,
Quad

ps. anyone recommend a free firewall. There isn't one installed on this computer.

snipe3000

Hi, two viruses cleaners will seriously slow your computers start up time. They will also take up alot more resources than needed if both are continuously enabled.

A solution is to leave 1 virus scanner continuously enabled and use the 2nd as a manual scan and removal tool to sweep for anything your 1st virus scanner missed.

Ya should also ensure that the manual scanner does not auto load at windows start up.

Gaillimhtaibhse

Two virus guards may conflict, like Norton and McAfee do. But on the other hand, multiple anti-malware/spyware programs are a good thing, because you cannot find one that does it all. I experiment. Trial and error. Add a program to my existing bundle, see what happens.

Was told not to run two firewalls. Currently use both an MS OS XP2 firewall and Norton 2006. No problems yet. I experiment.

There's a good article in PC WORLD called "Virus Killers" in the March 2006 issue just released. They estimate that from 70 to 100 new viruses (and related nasties) appear every day. The anti-virus programming companies cannot keep up, and are always running behind (consequently, you are exposed). The new direction in detection and blocking is to anticipate what a virus may look like based upon what they share in common, and then block it. This approach is called heuristics. BIT Defender 9 Standard got their highest heuristics detection ranking. They rank 9 others.

seamus

Two virus scanners can indeed interfere with eachother. Because of the low-level access many scanners have to processes and the system resources, other virus scanners may detect the process as a rootkit, virus or trojan, and block or quarantine it. Consequently, by installing two scanners, you may be reducing the effectiveness of both scanners, making yourself less secure.

Much like wearing more than one condom

quad_red

Ok then.

So if ye had a choice between AVG and Virus Chaser - which one would yehave continously enabled?

And Seamus - what's the harm in double bagging?

seamus

I should clarify, running two AV programs with real-time protection is what will cause problems. There's no harm in having one running real time, and using the other occasionally to see if anything was missed.

ghost26ie

quad_red wrote:

Ok then.

So if ye had a choice between AVG and Virus Chaser - which one would yehave continously enabled?

And Seamus - what's the harm in double bagging?

i keep AVG continously enabled. dont know alot about virus chaser. i have avg and mcafee running on my machine at work. no problems yet. did have a problem once with mcafee and adaware. had a machine riddled with spyware and viruses. ran adaware, found loads of things. but when it tried deleting the spyware it crashed. at the same time as adaware was cleaning mcafee popped up with a virus warning. eventually got it sorted tho.