Bios and AntiVirus questions.

[catattack]

Hey guys, I'm sick of this over and beyond Systemworks premier 2005 and now it's just doing TO much and making me mad! I'm looking for a antivirus free or not, but still good! I have Norton Antivirus 2003 I could reinstall but i'm not sure if thats even that good anymore.

I am also looking for a bios update for my NF7-S v.2. One that will increase some system performance or bootup. Can that even happen? Well anyway's I was just wondering if there was a bios that's safe yet pretty speedy.

Thanks guys!

[Xaneden]

2003 is fine catattack, if you want to get the very latest go for an OEM edition of Norton AntiVirus 2005. Tbh though, the only thing you get is a slightly more advanced scanning engine and worm protection, which is already included in Windows XP SP2 Firewall, and in fact, is included in WinXP RTM/SP1 Firewall.

[BUFF]

Try AVG or Avast!

Which BIOS are you on for your NF7-S V2.0?

[catattack]

I'm using the newest bios from the abit-usa.com website.

Xcelsion, do you think that AVG or Avast is better then 2003? I might try those but i'm a little skeptical because 2003 worked Just fine but I dont know lol.

Thanks a lot for the help guys!

[Xaneden]

lol, I think 2003 is just fine to be honest. The only thing I don't know, is whether Windows 'Security Center' included in SP2 will identify it as an Anti Virus. Even if it doesn't, it doesn't matter, you still get protected, you'll just have to put up with the little cross in your system tray.

[ANZAC_ELITE]

lol, I think 2003 is just fine to be honest. The only thing I don't know, is whether Windows 'Security Center' included in SP2 will identify it as an Anti Virus. Even if it doesn't, it doesn't matter, you still get protected, you'll just have to put up with the little cross in your system tray.

Security Centre does recognise NAV 2003.
My opinion, if you are going to use Norton use just an AV as SystemWorks etc create more problems than anything else. I moved from NAV 2003 to AVG 7 free and have no complaints.
A point to bear in mind here is Nortons dismal record with regard to identifying trojans.

[Xaneden]

Ah, good to hear Security Center acknowledges 2003. I had 2002 installed previously, and it didn't.

Also, heres a tip. When you first install Norton AntiVirus on a new installation of windows, and you register it so you can use it, you get 1 years license. However, if you reinstall Norton, it has deeply buried records in the registry which means you keep the years license.

When you reinstall Windows however, the registry is brand new, and strangely, Symantec don't keep a record of your 1 year license, so it gets renewed. I got 2002 edition in December 2001, and I've been using it up to last month, when I upgraded to 2005.

[catattack]

Ok I installed Avast and it seems pretty good. Does the A in the task bar mean it's virus protecting? Also, how do I set automatic virus checks?

[Xaneden]

I'd imagine if you double click on the little A, it'll open a window which lets you scan etc, and gives you options and an 'update' feature.

You may have to select the periodic timing of updates in options? I'm not really sure, as I've never used Avast, but that seems to the be the defacto for most AV programs.

[catattack]

Well anyways, i've heard of these non commercial use bios's that people had made. Or something like that? I've seen somone post a couple bios's for NF7-S v.2 here before but I just dont remember what they were and if they were performance increasing.

[jonathan_phang]

Couple of things:

Personally, I'd go for AVG, theyve sorted out the problem with slow update servers, but apart from that I'd recomend it. It doesnt really use many system resources and its always been able to detect and remove things for me.

In the security centre, you can turn off the check it does for antivirus sofware, so you wont get that annoying pop up

Finally, if you have the latest BIOS for the NF7-S then you wont get too much of a performance increase with any other. There have been user modified ones, but they are generally to do with overclocking, as some of the latest BIOSes dont have a 10x multiplier whilst over a certain FSB. These ones apparently have the best performance, so some people started taking bits from several and combining them. I wouldnt bother, just concentrate on optimizing your system, which reaps much higher rewards!

JP

[jon bda]

Another happy AVG user here...

[catattack]

Well the reason why I didnt go for AVG was because the Avast had some better reviews and user ratings to my knowledge. Anyway's it has actually gotten like 2 major trojans that my old antivirus never has and now when I play Counter Strike (for some reason only pop ups happend then) they dont pop up anymore!

[bambie]

nortan antivirus starts deletting your files after 2yrs

[ultimate]

nortan antivirus starts deletting your files after 2yrs

Anymore info on this please as it could be interesting.

[davidstone28]

The detection rates of the free ones - AVG, Avast, Antivir etc are comparatively, very poor and aren't to be recommended. NAV is quite good though it can be quite intrusive and it has troubling detecting within certain types of archives - .eba, .rar etc, and also tends to miss certain types of javascript viruses. McAfee's detection rate is excellent though its an absolute resource hog. The Panda Titanium suite is quite good and has quite a comprehensive feature set.

Kaspersky and F-Secure (which uses the Kaspersky engine) is by far and away the best. I was part of testing team that did a comparative analysis of AV software about 6 months ago and the results were quite eye opening. On one test machine, NAV detected 12 instances, removed them all and gave the machine a clean bill of health. On the same test machine (mirrored disk image) Kaspersky picked up 67 instances.

There's a nice summary guide here