Anti-Virus Programs & XP...opinions? 1

[boogerboots]

I'm using Norton with XP. Seems glitchy at times and some folks told me that Norton Anti-Virus does'nt work well with Windows XP. Does anybody have an opinion as to which anti-virus application works best with XP? Tks.

 

[darrenrd]

we run norton 2002 on 8 xp machines and havent had any problems with it

 

[Stealer]

I am running Norton 2002 pro and have had no problems at all.
Good luck

 

[Hungster]

get rid off that piece of crap
go with

http://www.antivirus.com

PC-cillin 2002

the best dude, mark my word
i use from pc-cillin to their entreprise NeatSuite, Server Protect, ScanMail for Exchange, OfficeScan and so on...

 

[xyrx]

I'm not as .. 'enthusiastic' as the last poster but I've done like 6 major rollouts in my career, two of which involved McAfee, and 3 involving Norton Antivirus (that one stragler belongs to a company trying to save some $$ and going with some other product.. can't remember what it was called). The 3 with Norton went fine with one exception.. Norton rolled out a bad 'update' in early 2000 that caused user's machines to hang at shutdown. No big deal, it was fixed the following night with the next update. The 2 that involved McAfee involved numerous illegal operations (an incompatibility between McAfee and some student loan software), and in one case, a user kept receiving the same email over and over and over in his inbox. It took us 2 weeks to determine it wasn't the POP mail server, it was McAfee looping that email.

I leave it to you to decide which. Personally, Norton has given me the least trouble, and would rate a 9 out of 10 on my scale of stable software and reliability. McAfee would get a 7 (if I was saying this 2 years ago, I would have taken the same enthusiasm as the previous poster, and said McAfee was a bunch of crap too... )

 

[Hungster]

it wouldn't be as big as a ISP, a friend of mine who is a reseller for Norton with tens of thousand of customers with large business, and after i referred him on Trend Micro, he was so impressed on it

for a Top Tech guy to say, it took a lot
so take it or leave it....

 

[Mulga]

I have users running both Norton and PC-cillin and both have had no problems whatever PROVIDING you are using the latest (2002) versions of the products. Do not attempt to use ealier versions with XP, they will work but are very buggy All things are possible except skiing through a revolving door.

 

[meastaugh1]

I've just done an upgrade on 30 PCs to XP with McAfee. They all went fine. But... the PCs haven't really had much every-day use, and won't until next week. So it remains to be seen I suppose.

I did find that on 95/98 platforms Mcafee corrupted itself, and wouldn't clear even after a reinstall of the AV software... probably due to a buggy DAT file so.. hmmm.... I'll soon find out how well it works.

I don't really have any experience of Norton, but many people posting on this forum seem to have found it problematic.

 

[Mulga]

Re Norton, with earlie versions on 95 and 98 I found it was fine in the usual business environment where mainstream software only was used, however in the home where users were likely to be using games, desktop enhancements, oddball utilities, etc it seemed to suffer from a lot of conflict problems. For this reason I have always recommended PC-cillin to my home clients as it seems more robust in this situation All things are possible except skiing through a revolving door.

 

[Guest_imported]

I ran across this when I thought I was having Nrton issues with XP Pro-

http://www.grisoft.com/html/us_index.htm?session=925d8ed57d6ada481d4aa23b913bf759

I liked it so much(and it is 100% FREE)that I dumped Norton altogether on all 3 of my machines.It has all the features of any other AV(boot disks, auto updates, scheduled maint etc) and has won several awards for quality.

Jimi_l

 

[SK79]

from my own experience, Norton Antivirus is always better. I've found that McAfee not only slows down each set considerably, but seriously compromises the stability of the OS.

Sadly, our firm promotes McAfee as our preferred Anti-Virus solution. I've yet to find out why. Whether it's 95,98,NT, 2000 or XP, I've yet to see a successful McAfee install which doesn't adversely affect the set within 18 months...

 

[Scotsdude]

Might be worth checking out Sophos (

http://www.sophos.com).

I Work in the IT dept of a hospital, and we have somewhwre in the region of 5000+ PC's running Windows 95/98/ME/NT(workstation & server)/2K(workstation & server/XP and the only problems we have are those niggling ones with the same machines (you know, NO software will install properly for the first time )

Sophos is really quick with updates, and their Enterprise software makes remote installation a breeze.....

Scotsdude

 

[johnny99]

We also use Sophos on workstations. Mostly NT4 and Win2K.
Works fine and is stable.
The best way to say what we think about Sophos is that we realy don't think about it. We just check that it pulls the updates as it should

I wouldn't use Sophos on a single workstation but in a company like ours it's great

/johnny

 

[boogerboots]

Tks everybody,
All of your input has been valuable. So far I've used trend micro's PC-cillin, AVG anti-virus and Norton with XP.
I guess for now I'll stick with Norton, seems well enough. Maybe it's my machine that's buggy rather than my anti-virus software. Again, Tks

 

[jazzgirl]

Try NOD32. It has a small footprint and has out-tested just about all anti-virus programs. Updates are often and you hardly even know its running.

 

[Guest_imported]

I have had some severe problems running Norton 2002 and Windows XP. 3 complete system failures with Dell, Microsoft and Norton all pointing fingers in the other direction. On the last reinstall, I left out the antivirus and have been problem free since them. From what I have read above, i will be trying the PC-cillin

 

[TBPFL]

Sophos Antivirus works Great on XP/2000/98 machines. Can administrate updates over your network for automatic installation at startup on desktops.

http://www.sophos.com

 

[EddieVenus]

I have had minor issues with NAV 2002 on XP pro. Though nothing to get concerned about. I uninstalled it and all those issues went away. I installed my old version on NAV 2000 and had no such problems. Though I not recommend going long term without some virus protection, they are all going to have pitfalls, most are either less likely to catch the virus in the first place or cannot fully containd or delete it, some will signaificantly slow down your machine, and the rest will have some issues at some point that will cause you to hate them. I have 6 machines here and a consulting business where I tell my clients the same thing. I usually recommend NAV (norton) to my customers, but I have seen most of the AV products out there, and can say that none are perfect and all cause problems. Most of my machines here use NAV either 2000 or 2002, one uses Trend PC-cillin, one uses something called Panda, all in all they are all virus free. I have run those tests that Symantec used to use on all my systems and all the AV scanners found them all, execpt for an old copy of McCafee. Use one that does not impact performance unless you really need the best protection, since most virii need you to be somewhat stupid to begin with, if you just don't open any and all email attachments unless you know they are clean, you stay away from MS outlook, and you don't download and run unknown programs you should not need the protection NAV offers. You could then use one of the lesser known ones, the ones that have more to gain by being less vigilant and less obstuctive. That is just my 2 cents. You of course may have different opinions, and therefore should just do what those opinions lead you to do, unless they tell you to use McCafee, since I think we all agree that they are not so good.

 

[jimioz]

Just a thought from a consultant...

McAfee will cause you problems sooner or later. Get rid of it! No mater how hard you try to stay on top of it, it will bite you in the end. And when it does, you will think its something else, and chase your tail for days trying to figure it out.

Stick with Norton, it works. Symantec makes two products worth having (and now that XP is out, only one) they are NAV and PC anywhere. Nothing else from them is bug free (like sytem works...)

The only problem I have had with NAV is trying to install it after a virus hits. Even after you get rid of the virus, sometimes NAV will not work after install. The fix is to uninstall it, and re-install it. For some reason this works all the time.

 

[Hungster]

on the other hand, PC-Cillin will work and get rid off virus even your pc gets infected by virus

i ran across one pc with 30 some worm, nimda, and so on, it kills it all, believe it or not