Vista - what does Windows Defender really protects and scans for?

Defender is not a universal medecine for all the virus, spyware & adware
problems. It is a good software that finds a lot of spyware/malware, but it
is NOT an antivirus. It's not a firewall neither.

If you have only Defender installed (and no other security software) then it
make your computer an easy pray for viruses and attacks.

Personally I use Defender once every few days to make a scan of the whole
system. Also I have Ad-Aware installed that I run once a week. It is similar
to Defender, but it's always good to have an alternative since no one can
garantee that Defender (or any other antispyware) will find every single
threat in your system.

As antivirus I use AVIRA, a really cool piece of software that never let me
down for the past 2,5 years (I used it on XP, and now I have it on Vista).
They update their virus definitions several times a day and they have a
quite powerful scanner that scans on the fly every single file you access
(and it is not a resource hog like Norton of Trend Micro). There is a free
edition at http://www.free-av.com/ (for personal use only) and a commercial
version at http://www.avira.com/en/pages/index.php (the commercial version
has a built-in antispyware, antiphishing, firewall etc... but the antivirus
scanner is the same as in the free version).

Another thing that IMO every computer should have is a firewall. You have a
very wide spread of possibilities (including free ones). It's up to you to
make a choice. I would recommend Zone Alarm Free that I use for about 1 year
and find simple to configure and use. A firewall protects you from unwanted
connection from (an to) the Internet. You can control what installed program
can or cannot go online without your permission, update itself, or (in the
case of spyware) detect a software that tries to send gathered information
from your system somewhere (troyans, keyloggers etc...). In a few words, you
know what's going through your connection.

What's been said in a previous post about "the less software installed - the
best" is not true. The less security software you have, the more
mal/spy/ad/ware software you'll get. Of course there is no sense in
installing 3 antiviruses, 5 antispywares an 2 firewalls (that would look
like paranoia ) but I would recommend to any user to install
a) an antivirus software (and update the virus definitions daily),
b) a firewall (or at least turn on the windows firewall, it's not as bad as
a lot of people say or think)
c) an antispyware (at least use Defender a couple time a week, and don't
forget to update the definitions here too!).

Wow! that's a lot of letters I typed here, hopefully someone will find them
useful!


"A.H." <nospam@xxxxxx> píse v diskusním príspevku
news:uv2FS1APIHA.4480@xxxxxx

momo wrote:

< snip >Could you tell me how many viruses this cool piece of software has found in the last 2.5 years ?
If it hasn't let you down, then it must have found lots of virusus.
Please post details, you should find lots of information in the antivirus log file.
Thanks very much.
..

"bomb#20" <darkstar@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:uYydnTKkUpYKYP3aRVnyjgA@xxxxxxI our case in this office with around over 20+ computers, no virus was ever
found for 3 years since I am here. We have Norton, McAfee and Micro Trend.
Only those so call virus was found were cookies.

"ARH" <nospam@xxxxxx> wrote in message news:uu6Hx5ZPIHA.3556@xxxxxxYou use three AVs on one machine? Or, those three are used separately
on different machines?

I certainly hope your IT guy doesn't run those three in real-time
at once. That's just ignorant.

I use NOD32 on all my machines and ClamWin as an on-demand
second opinion.


-Michael

On Thu, 13 Dec 2007 07:37:57 -0800, "ARH" <nospam@xxxxxx> wrote:
Really?
Oh, that explains why nothing was found.

Straight Talk wrote:What antivirus software do you use ?
When did you last get a virus ?
..

"MICHAEL" <u158627_emr2@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:uqaLB%23ZPIHA.5164@xxxxxxNo, we have over 30+ machines. Each machine only use one antivirus program.
Typically these antivirus programs comes pre-installed in the systems, such
as Dell or HP...

"ARH" <nospam@xxxxxx> wrote in message news:uN3DlLbPIHA.3676@xxxxxxIMO, using the same AV for all computers makes much
more sense. Having some type of free AV for an on-demand
"second opinion" can be helpful, too.


-Michael

On Thu, 13 Dec 2007 17:15:54 -0000, "bomb#20" <darkstar@xxxxxx> wrote:
None.
Many years ago.

Em Quinta, 13 de Dezembro de 2007 15:37, ARH escreveu:

That is not normal at all, with all the malware out there, you guys never
catch one??
Are those Anti-virus working at all?

We have norton corporated on a network of > 200 Pc's and it catch about 100
virus every day... busy, busy, busy norton...