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Ask Slashdot: Light-Footprint Antivirus For Windows XP?
New submitter Bauermlb writes "I service computers for retired folks in my community, often older machines with modest speed (2 GHz Centron) and modest memory (512 MB). Adding AVAST to one of these machines slows it to a crawl. Any recommendations for a light-duty antivirus program with a low overhead? (These people do not tend to surf 'dirty' sites.)"
That's what they tell you, eh?
Liberty in your lifetime
Ad networks/common popular websites have been compromised repeatedly in the past and will be compromised repeatedly in the future. All sites could be considered "dirty sites".
There is no such thing as a safe website. These days any site can wind up hosting malware via banner ads that inject code.
AVG is relatively lightweight but I would suggest you test it and others on some of your target hardware.
I've seen way better performance with it than with McAfee, Avast, etc.
Detection benchmarks typically put it on par with the other free solutions, though it changes from month to month.
Do they *really* need Windows? Or would a lightweight distro with a windows-like interface do the job? Just asking :)
Seems a reasonable bet... http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/software/379933/avira-free-antivirus-13
MSE was OK when I last tried it, but it made a footprint on a 1.8ghz single core proc machine. Of course anything will make a footprint on a low-enough-end machine. Previously I had used AVG which was also OK but the networking features tended to break Source engine games even if they were off (you had to deselect them entirely at AVG install time). Anyways not sure if the LATEST version of MSE supports XP still or not. You might be able to grab an older version that still does though.
I've been using it for the last 3 years on XP and now 7, very lightweight. No virus or adware problem (for now). From time to time I also scan my computer with adaware and spybot.
Try it! Library of Babel
Not that I'm promoting it as effective virus protection, but MSE has a light effect on my Windows partition. Seldom using Windows, but I surf on it ocassionally. Don't know if MS will continue to support it after XP dies, but looking at my parents computer and the 4 websites they visit, I really wonder how robust an anti-virus program someone who is elderly actually needs. Good experiment for somebody: use XP with NO virus protection for a month, visit the same websites these people visit, use a modern web browser (not IE 8), and see at the end of that period if you are actually infected.
It's not so much a memory issue as it is the nature of the beast. Active scanning hogs hard disk performance. I would ask these people if they might want to get a Chromebook or similar. The aging hardware might soon go to PC heaven so they will need to replace the system anyway.
"Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair" - George Washington
Microsoft is killing updates for XP in a little under 9 months. Get them onto linux or a new PC or it may not matter how good of an antivirus you put on there after that.
Personally I'd rather have my idiots at home glued to the TV than out doing idiotic things
Yes, I know... it failed certification. But often what is used in certification is proof-of-concept or old and very rare samples that may not be "in the wild". It deliberately doesn't detect them to have a lighter footprint and be easier on resources. I use it on 1 GHz machines with 512MB of RAM with no noticeable slowdown. It doesn't miss the stuff that you're actually going to be at risk of getting infected with, in my experience.
You didn't state the OS you were asking about, but IIRC Avast is Windows-only. MSE may fit your requirements.
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
Sempron, Celeron?
And if you have only 512 MB of RAM, you don't have an older machine-- you have an OLD machine!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
In my experience it is so much easier to avoid the whole problem of Windows malware, simply by installing Linux. I tell my friends that I don't do Windows. They then assume I use a Mac - I use a Mac too, so that isn't wrong. When I tell them that I can install something on their computer that will make it work almost exactly the same as a Mac, then they actually get interested and once they have Linux with XFCE running, they never look back.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
John McAfee himself strongly recomends it, says it's like having a Bangkok prostitute do your taxes while you fuck your accountant:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/21/quotw_ending_june_21/
"I want an elephant the size of a mouse, please"
Antivirus software sniffs the butt of ever filesystem write operation, as well as sniffing the but of every executable image load, as well as every browser plugin load; it also scans the contents of inbound network data, since it could have a known payload using an unknown zero day in the program requesting the data from the Internet.
Most of the code could be made significantly less overhead, but we are talking reducing it from elephant sized to water buffalo sized, rather than reducing it to mouse size. For example, if instead of checking the whole file when every write occurs, it could prevent the file being opened again until a scan-on-close occurred. Both Outlook and IE would hate that, and any browser that didn't operate "stage then interpret" would still have to be byte-stream interposed. As another example, it could decide to not react to every FS event; MacOS has this capability, since it integrates a mandator access controls (MAC) capability, but many OSs do not. And even on MacOS, most AV vendors don't take advantage of this, since it messes with their ability to use the same event streaming model as on their other platforms.
So: no such animal exists, if you want it to also be effective.
Seriously. It's amazing. I'm using it on a PIII 1.0 ghz 512 PC133 box that I use as a server. It impressed me so much that I switched from AVG (which was slowing down my Core i5 box) and now don't even notice a scan.
I cannot recommend Bitdefender enough.
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
ClamWin is "light footprint" because it's no footprint. It has no on-access scanning, which for most people is indistinguishable from not having antivirus installed.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
I think he is getting confused and meant to type Centrino which was, at sometime a marketing/branding term for an Intel Reference Design consisting of Chipset, CPU and Wifi. Either way, they wrote it wrong, but lurkers from the past would have recognized it. It was posted on a lot of laptop stickers in the same way Pentium 4, Core X, etc are.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrino
As for /. letting this through... things have changed, have you been gone for the past 3 years?
I completely disagree with you. I have used MSE on ALL my familys machines since it came out and I have yet to have it fail and yet to notice ANY slowing of my system other anti-virus programs caused. Any it is approved by my work VPN AV check. I am completely satisfied with it.
Install Linux
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Very fast, very high testing marks. Not free but you get what you pay for - it is worth it.
www.blueapples.org
DDR2 laptop memory is mental everywhere. Everything else is somewhat reasonable on ebay. Brand new is still in crazy-ville but what kind of idiot would buy DDR1 from systemax or crucial at this point? Hey look, 20 sticks of 512MB DDR2 for $40
http://www.ebay.com/itm/LOT-OF-20-Tested-Samsung-DDR2-512MB-PC2-5300-667MHz-Desktop-Memory-/330957821186?pt=US_Memory_RAM_&hash=item4d0e9f9502
and 100 sticks of 512MB DDR1 for $150
http://www.ebay.com/itm/LOT-OF-100-512MB-DDR-NON-ECC-MAJOR-OEM-2100-2700-3200-/360697684461?pt=US_Memory_RAM_&hash=item53fb41e1ed
I pay $0 because I recycle computers at my shop and pull decent sized ram sticks. I also just picked up 24x 1GB DDR2 for a by-the-pound price at my scrap dealer. It's all aluminum cooled, good brand stuff.
Not true. Firefox + fireclam addon. Thunderbird + clamdrib (tho you have to work to find it)
That's not on-access, that's on-access-through-a-specific-application.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Avast isn't heavy on CPU usage. It relies on fast HDD access. All antiviruses do and if it seems like they don't, they're simply not scanning as much as they should. Avast is the king resource usage vs detection rate so you should still use it.
Oh and to the couple morons above me recommending MSSE, you're completely out of touch with reality. It is the dead last worst rated antivirus in the entire world and a resource disaster. It's the last efficient scanner I've ever seen in my entire life and the disk IO is absurd.
Avast used to be good.
Then came the bloat and adverts. While the virus threat is always evolving and changing, some performance un-hancements are clearly development choices. Is there any reason, for example, to override the standard window controls with a super fancy custom rendered GUI that runs in 50x of the time of native controls? Particularly when this is a Windows application with no cross-platform needs at all? It's almost as bad as every ASUS utility GUI.
More Twoson than Cupertino
The computer that made me spawn this post has not been running any virus checker for a number of years. No evidence of viruses when I checked it out. I left it running without one because AVAST brought it to its knees. The gentleman using this machine is tech savy (retired engineer, not EE), mid-to-late 70's, but not a computer power user. Mostly he uses it to check email (browser only), and write letters. My experience with users of that generation is that they get comfortable with what they have been using, but changing to MAC or LINUX would make them very uncomfortable, in spite of the fact that they use only a browser (usually IE) and a word processor.
I hear MyCleanPC will speed up your PC and protect you from your own hosts file. (ducks) (runs) (ducks some more)
Avast is lightweight... I am ruining it right now on 450mhz pentium 2 with 384mb of ram. Avast is the only free av that didn't slow this machine down.
---- GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Just remember if you install some of those AV programs they will try and install a toolbar and crap when they ask to update themselves in the future. Do you want them to install new version of program or ask for help when it asks?
I think it was AVG that got dumped when i eventually missed unchecking the box once on a machine and got a new search provider and other stupid shit :/
MSE is not so hot but it doesn't play silly games either