Avast! declares open war on Advanced System Care and ZipGenius 6

[Rising Dragon]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

Why not run the open-source 7-Zip instead?

7-Zip, for whatever reason, likes crashing my computer when its used.

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by Rising Dragon

7-Zip, for whatever reason, likes crashing my computer when its used.

You might want to drop the developers a note about that problem when you get a chance.

[0utf0xZer0]

Avast seems to have put out an update yesterday that triggered false positives on a crapload of software... happened with Spybot Search and Destroy for me. I think it's already been fixed though.

[chikorita157]

Avast seems to put out a fix, but false positives and high resource usage is the main reason I stop using antivirus programs and use common sense instead and also disabling Autorun, etc...

You might want to try using other free alternatives. Microsoft released a free antivirus awhile ago, so you may want to try that.

[Kotohono]

Originally Posted by chikorita157

Avast seems to put out a fix, but false positives and high resource usage is the main reason I stop using antivirus programs and use common sense instead and also disabling Autorun, etc...

You might want to try using other free alternatives. Microsoft released a free antivirus awhile ago, so you may want to try that.

Out of curiosity, I am wondering how and by what standards have Avast as high resource usage. Because when I look at on my computer usage unless it's updating, or actively scanning it's not even taking up 1% of my processor and it's size on disk is only 100 MB or so, and also common sense can protect against a lot of stuff, but it won't protect against a seemly safe stuff like hidden iframes on a page, or hosted file that is virus infected if you DL or torrent anything.

[chikorita157]

Originally Posted by Konakaga

Out of curiosity, I am wondering how and by what standards have Avast as high resource usage. Because when I look at on my computer usage unless it's updating, or actively scanning it's not even taking up 1% of my processor and it's size on disk is only 100 MB or so, and also common sense can protect against a lot of stuff, but it won't protect against a seemly safe stuff like hidden iframes on a page, or hosted file that is virus infected if you DL or torrent anything.

I barely use Windows that much except to play Windows only games on Steam (Audiosurf), Visual Novels and Sims 2/3. Plus, I have OpenDNS filtering out all the spyware/malware websites and have UAC set on high. An Anti-virus is pretty much impractical since I only use Windows 7 5% of the time. Besides, I have limited resources since I only have 2 GB of DDR3 RAM and I need to use that ram for gaming, not Anti-malware software that I don't need (and off the bat, Windows 7 uses 34-39% of the RAM).

I do rest of my productivity, browsing and downloading on Linux/Mac OS X.

[Rising Dragon]

Well, while Avast hasn't given me issues with ASC today, this program has clearly stated that it has not downloaded the latest patch, and I can't seem to induce it to do so.

[-KarumA-]

Originally Posted by Rising Dragon

Alright, hope it clears up soon.

...

That being said, anyone like to take a crack at my ZipGenius 6 problems? Lately, sometimes when I close a zip file, ZipGenius pops up with an error involving a bunch of coding. The only option is to hit okay, and doing so pops up the same error again. Hitting okay clears it. Also, a couple times, ZipGenius refuses to unzip the contents of a zip file at all, coming up with some sort of encoding error. Searching the net garners me no clues, and reinstalling doesn't seem to help at all.

perhaps Winrar?
That is what I use, and no problems so far

Originally Posted by chikorita157

You might want to try using other free alternatives. Microsoft released a free antivirus awhile ago, so you may want to try that.

also, free alternative Avast is free (as well as paying)
And I would avoid Microsoft side products as a plague since I do not trust it

Originally Posted by Konakaga

Out of curiosity, I am wondering how and by what standards have Avast as high resource usage. Because when I look at on my computer usage unless it's updating, or actively scanning it's not even taking up 1% of my processor and it's size on disk is only 100 MB or so, and also common sense can protect against a lot of stuff, but it won't protect against a seemly safe stuff like hidden iframes on a page, or hosted file that is virus infected if you DL or torrent anything.

Avast gives a good protection against standard viruses, even with a high tech paid virus scanner you wont be able to do much if you for example have a big infection on your hand that is tearing everything into pieces
And when surfing online you will of course have to use your own common sense, if you want to download virus holding programs as a torrent of course Avast will warn you and if it is a .zip then it will warn you when you open the .zip
but Avast cannot tell you not to download those things if you do it manually and it isn't an automatic thing, when downloading a torrent always read the notes and comments, if the comments scream virus virus then isn't it obvious what you should do?
As for hidden viruses, although some people only have an anti-virus and Avast does protect against viruses infecting when you visit a website (it will stop the site and warn you about it and then you make a choice to continue or not)
an addblocker helps nicely, not all anti virus programs were build to protect from any infection kind you could think of (they don't cause they can milk more money by making different products -> security, anti-virus, malware etc.)
And I am pleased with the small amount of discspace it requires, it means you can run it even on a crappy pc and I wouldn't want a few gb's lost to a protection program when you have a few others installed as well

[Rising Dragon]

I already use WinRAR, but I prefer ZipGenius since its a little bit more flexible if I want to only extract certain files with or without pathways. Its either one or the other on WinRAR, unfortunately.

Plus it constantly telling me I need to purchase a license is a bit annoying.

[Kotohono]

Originally Posted by -KarumA-

an addblocker helps nicely, not all anti virus programs were build to protect from any infection kind you could think of (they don't cause they can milk more money by making different products -> security, anti-virus, malware etc.)
And I am pleased with the small amount of discspace it requires, it means you can run it even on a crappy pc and I wouldn't want a few gb's lost to a protection program when you have a few others installed as well

Trust me I know, to not just depend on Avast, or any virus scanner, so just about all my browsing is on firefox which thankful has great plugins of noscript, and adblocker, which stops most of those kinda ad issues.

[demonix]

Originally Posted by chikorita157

but false positives and high resource usage is the main reason I stop using antivirus programs and use common sense instead.

Unfortunately common sense won't help on the web anymore considering a website is hacked every 3.6 seconds so that trusted website could already be hacked and be used to distribute malicious content to users computers.

Edit: It seems that the reason all this happened is because the 091203-0 update was never tested before it was released and those who were holding the fort after the release never bothered to check the forums since there was people posting there about the problem before they actually found out at just before 5am GMT when they started on a fix.

[SaintessHeart]

Avast is known to be a real nag. It blocks Steam initially and lags out all my L4D2 games until I add an exception.

Still, I don't complain because it is one of the best AVS in the market.

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

Avast is known to be a real nag. It blocks Steam initially and lags out all my L4D2 games until I add an exception.

Still, I don't complain because it is one of the best AVS in the market.

Wait... what? Avast isn't a firewall. Now, otoh, MS Defender/Firewall is an annoying tool (especially in the way it waits til you exit software in frustration before it says "Oh, I'm blocking this. Did you want it?")

[chikorita157]

I don't see a point to using a software based firewall if you are behind a NAT. The only possible times you woud use one if you on a public Wifi network or directly hooked to a modem.

Unfortunately common sense won't help on the web anymore considering a website is hacked every 3.6 seconds so that trusted website could already be hacked and be used to distribute malicious content to users computers.

Mainly because of Javascript and Java applet attacks. You can prevent them by disabling Javascript and Java and only enable on trusted sites... but then again, Web Browsers, despite which OS you use can still get these type of malware (in forms of malicious Javascript/applets and adware/spyware tracking cookies) that can take personal information from your computer. Anti-virus software won't help you much in a web browser based attacks.

[demonix]

Originally Posted by chikorita157

Anti-virus software won't help you much in a web browser based attacks.

That may be true of most anti-virus software but not with avast as its web shield uses its own cache to scan web pages before releasing that data to the browser and if it catches anything it will warn you (all of these attacks that come from hacked sites are in hidden iframes) and allow you to abort the connection meaning that item will be dumped and not sent to the browser.