Anti Virus Software

[yoerik]

I second Avast: free, light, no annoying adds and can be turned off easily (turn off till next reboot is nice!)

[Zooce]

Very cool, I was actually thinking about Kaspersky.

I haven't heard of Avast, I'll check that one out, (free is always nice)

[yoerik]

I haven't heard of Kaspersky, so I can't compare.

[GeneOuse]

I wouldn't go with Kaspersky, not the lightest AV out there. Avast is pretty good but I would recommend giving Vipre a try. It's very lightweight, I compared it with at least 6 leading AV's out there but nothing is as light on resources as Vipre. Just make sure to uncheck "Check files when they are opened or copied".

[sunburst79]

The only virus/malware that I have ever got came from a test rig I had loaded Avast Free onto - luckily I was going to wipe it anyway. A friend I had recommended Avast Free to also got invaded to the point were he unplugged the computer and stuck it in the closet. I would recomend AVG FREE but they bricked a couple hundred thousand computers 6 months or so ago.

[yoerik]

I used to use avg free, but got away from it. I've used it on different systems and it was quite heavy on the resources, and significantly starteds slowing down the system after a couple of weeks. Every 3-4 months I had to do a clean Windows install. Couldn't really figure why, until I dropped avg. Maybe things have changed by now, I'm talking about 2-3 years ago.

[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by yoerik

I used to use avg free, but got away from it. I've used it on different systems and it was quite heavy on the resources, and significantly starteds slowing down the system after a couple of weeks. Every 3-4 months I had to do a clean Windows install. Couldn't really figure why, until I dropped avg. Maybe things have changed by now, I'm talking about 2-3 years ago.

AVG got bought 2 or three years ago and it has gotton a bit top heavy. And then they bricked a whole bunch of computers when they deleted some critical system files as I mentioned in the previous post.

[DonM]

At the university where I teach, we are currently 'retiring' our Norton Anti-Virus solution (approximately 3500 Windows Systems) and migrating to Kaspersky. In an Enterprise - central management is equally important to edge functionality and after significant testing Kaspesky has proven top dog in the enterprise class. For two years they have run Norton AV simultaneously with MSE. The techs and security folk have considered the performance issues associated with the dual solution and honestly on my university issue Dell Laptop running both AV's on Win7 64 bit - Pro Tools 9.0.3, Sonar 8.5.3 and Sound Forge 10 run fine. - Go figure.

Interestingly enough on Friday MSE popped up with a virus on my machine (first time ever) it was an Excel spreadsheet from 2003 - I haven't opened that file in 8 years - Norton AV has been on the system since then for sure .. and .. some MSE update on Friday morning decided that file was nasty. Go figure again.

-D

[lberrios1962]

You should keep your DAW out of the internet. I use one PC for my music recording/software programs (DAW) and another computer connected to the internet for everything else.
That will keep you save. If you need to download something to your DAW, use an external HD connected to you internet computer with AV and then transfer it to your DAW via CDR.

I found out that some Microsoft updates are messing up with protools LE 8. I also keep my DAW the same way it came from the manufacture. Just the required software to run my Protools, Wavelab 7, Samplitude, Sound Forge 10 and Sonar X1 applications.

Just my 0.2 cents.