Hey Guys and Gals

Has any of you noticed if Windows Defender turns off the Auto-Protect setting on Symantec or any other Anti-Virus software you use?

Any other reason not to run Windows Defender? I vaguely recall something I read that slammed Defender, can't remember for what reason though.

 

I have it, No problems with it really, But it seems to catch less than my other AV's and AS's, But no real problems with it.

 

Windows Defender is my current anti-spyware solution alongside AVG for viruses and Sygate as my firewall. There haven't been any bad interactions like you're asking about that I've noticed.

Overall, I'm pretty unimpressed with Windows Defender and am considering moving to a better all-in-one package such as Kaspersky. Windows Defender used to be the best anti-spyware software on the market back when it was known as Giant AntiSpyware. That's probably why Microsoft bought them out in 2004 and remade it as Windows Defender. I don't know if Microsoft smothered what made it so good, or if the nature of malware evolved past what it could cope with.

The criticisms that you can vaguely recall are probably from a couple of studies that showed that Windows Defender was catching about half or less of known malware. That's a pretty abysmal failure rate. Both of the tests were paid for by anti-malware competitors though, so I wouldn't trust either of them. It's in Webroot and PC Tool's best interests to make you doubt the anti-malware capabilities of Windows default products. Microsoft aren't the only people who know how to use fear, uncertainty and doubt.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/20/anti-spyware_tests/
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=8474

You'd never catch me using Symantec though. My parents use it and still managed to catch every virus known to man on XP. I'd routinely have to clean the system out manually because Symantec couldn't catch a fly in molasses let alone a wild virus, trojan or other piece of malware. Some of those rootkits I fished out were made by particularly devious bastards. My parents seem to have done alright under Vista so far, though they are having a few problems that may be virus related which I'll look into when I've got the time.

I don't know what the best free anti-malware packages are any more. Spybot and Ad-Aware used to be quite good...

Alright, I've done some googling. The Editor reviews at download.com seem to be fairly trustworthy, which I was definitely not expecting. Ad-Aware and Spybot both still rank fairly highly but have annoying flaws. Ad-Aware's free version has a crippled anti-malware engine and Spybot is unstable. Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware seems to be the new star in the free anti-malware market.

For realtime protection, if you require it, you could go with Spybot or Javacool's SpywareBlaster. Use one or the other, not both. I'd probably go with SpywareBlaster, but it shouldn't make much difference either way. I've used both in the past and have been happy with them.

 

I ran Kaspersky on my old computer before it died, i'll be setting it up on my new one soon.

Its fan-fucking-tastic. Catches pretty damn well everything. Only thing i would say about it, is that it updates literally all the time. You can expect 2-3 updates a day, and this means that if you are streaming vids or torrenting or playing online games it can get in the way sometimes. Other than that, highly recommended.

 

The only problem with Kaspersky is that you have to pay. It's US$59.95 for only one year. D: If it was that much forever, I'd pay it. I hate subscription based services even though $5/mo is a reasonable amount.

edit: Even with my dislike for paying a subscription, I'm still tempted because the free versions of software I'm using are becoming notably dated and in need of replacing. Sygate Firewall is long abandoned. It lacks several simple options that'd make it much easier to work with. It's closed source, so they'll never be added now. AVG 7.5 has been superceded by the craptacular AVG 8.0 and I'm not sure how well 7.5's engine will hold up in future. Anti-malware can require two different programs if you want both decent realtime protection and indepth search and removal capabilities.

It'd be nice to swap them all out for just one set of tools.

 

Yak, Zonealarm is a great firewall that gets update if you are looking for another Freeware one. Avast, Avg 7.5, Avira and you are pretty mush set with Anti-Virus, Anything else is really just filling.

 

Thanks for the tip on Zonealarm. I'd written it off because at one point Zonealarm was packaged with crapware or became bloated, I forget which. That seems to have changed now. I'm not looking forward to the chore of moving all of my firewall settings from Sygate to whatever package I end up using.