smallhagrid Posted July 12, 2013 Share Posted July 12, 2013 I've been a happy with NOD32 on my own PCs for quite a while.Generally it always did a good job and caused no real problems.I run a little resource monitor app and usually it shows Firefox to be the biggest resource hog.Last week it started showing NOD32 as an even bigger hog, using almost a gigabyte of RAM and the total RAM use jumped up from around 30% to over 40% steadily.Seemed to me it was time to re-visit the list of good, free AV apps.What I noticed is that since I last looked alot of the freebies have changed their sites and look very much alike.Most of them make no claims of offering email scanning in their free versions - except for the Chinese made ones, and I prefer to avoid those.After looking around, the 2 which most appealed to me were ClamAV (with Sentinel) and UnThreat AV.I also decided to dump Online Armor at the same time because it does some really screwy stuff and causes huge slowdowns sometimes.So I installed UnThreat AV and AVS firewall instead.After cleaning out the remnants of NOD & OA - my desktop PC is now using only 25% of RAM with Firefox having 12 tabs open and it is it's usual hoggy self instead of the AV program.Question:Anybody here ever try out UnThreat or AVS firewall ??(Neither seems to be well known or popular, but they do have good reviews.)Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Airstream_Bill Posted July 12, 2013 Share Posted July 12, 2013 Use Private Firewall. It is good. FREE etc. Nice Does a lot. That is my only suggestion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tezza Posted July 12, 2013 Share Posted July 12, 2013 @smallhagridI have not used so can't comment on the AV, but just a cautionary note from an article last year.Scandium Security Inc., is a cover name to hide its real owners. They also closed down the community support forums.UnThreat had been sold to Polmont Ventures, Ltd./Bandoo Media Inc! ( Bandoo/Searchqu/iLivid = Win32 PUP Bandoo spyware/adware)Polmont Ventures, Ltd distributes spyware and were involved in file-sharing scams. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smallhagrid Posted July 12, 2013 Author Share Posted July 12, 2013 Ugh.Thanks Tezza.I can only hope that in the year since...they have ceased doing the badware thing somehow - but I guess now I better be very careful in keeping watch over my PC.I don't do any online banking or buying at all so there's not much worry there.It's really a shame that those folks have a dubious history, maybe I'll switch to ClamAV right away then...Last post in the same thread that lists Tezza's info:http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=312853&page=7Could be legitimate <=> could be not.(I'm leaning towards not because the whole s/w industry seems to smell like rotten fish nowadays.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mastershake Posted July 12, 2013 Share Posted July 12, 2013 just curious have you tried to reinstall nod? and which version were you running? the newest v7 runs awesome and has lower ram usage here than v5 or v6. i only see around 90k memory usage from it normally sometimes less sometimes more but just a bit. also there was a issue with a certain version (cant remember which right now) where nod had a memory leak. this i believe was fixed in a update program version.otherwise i use webroot a lot and its imo the lightest thing out there. it is a bit sensitive and at times here and there has a few false positives (not that often) but its extremely light and can be found very cheap online most of the time. imo none of the free ones are any lighter than eset most are heavier on the system (i have tested almost every av out there) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smallhagrid Posted July 12, 2013 Author Share Posted July 12, 2013 Thanks Mastershake.I haven't tried reinstalling NOD - but I may at some point.It'd be best for me if I can find a free one that I can live with, at least for a while...Edit:I found a bunch more of reviews and info about UnThreat and it seems that even though 'Scandium Security' is some kind of puppet company that UnThreat is still just a re-designed Vipre and that even though all the subterfuge has caused massive distrust - nobody has come forward yet with any bad reports as a result of using it.Very strange. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Knightmare Posted July 13, 2013 Share Posted July 13, 2013 Which version are you using? I'm using the latest version of 6 but I don't notice any slowdown. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LiLmEgZ Posted July 13, 2013 Share Posted July 13, 2013 Which version are you using? I'm using the latest version of 6 but I don't notice any slowdown.Same here... not noticing it either if it happens lol!Just reinstall NOD32 Version 6... and use MaraBox fix, should do the trick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cypher3927 Posted July 13, 2013 Share Posted July 13, 2013 If you're looking for something free why not go with AVG? (any rhyming was completely unintentional) Also Comodo has many free offerings that should fit the bill quite nicely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LiLmEgZ Posted July 14, 2013 Share Posted July 14, 2013 If you're looking for something free why not go with AVG? (any rhyming was completely unintentional) Also Comodo has many free offerings that should fit the bill quite nicely.Well Cypher... this person likes NOD32 (and so do I too!) and would rather stick with it if they can fix this issue at hand.Needless to say that ESET NOD32 is probably one of the best AV programs out there that has light footprint and usage and protects VERY VERY well! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cypher3927 Posted July 14, 2013 Share Posted July 14, 2013 If you're looking for something free why not go with AVG? (any rhyming was completely unintentional) Also Comodo has many free offerings that should fit the bill quite nicely.Well Cypher... this person likes NOD32 (and so do I too!) and would rather stick with it if they can fix this issue at hand.Needless to say that ESET NOD32 is probably one of the best AV programs out there that has light footprint and usage and protects VERY VERY well!Oh I totally agree and I have been utilizing it myself for many years. I only suggested the free offerings because the op started bringing up some shady software so rather than that I recommended some legitimate companies that he might want to explore. I will say that ESET has an annoying problem that I have been experiencing since version 5: I have to boot up with all externals on because if they are turned on or off while Windows is running my computer freezes and has to be hard rebooted. ESET says that this can be fixed by not authorizing immediately and restarting first but I have been unsuccessful in getting the software to work properly in that sense. Also to save people some hassle I suggest that if you use Roboform that you make sure that it isn't attaching to Windows applications (should only attach to the browser) because this will crash egui. Hopefully that tip can save people some headaches if they use this software. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smallhagrid Posted July 15, 2013 Author Share Posted July 15, 2013 Thanks Folks.Truth is I'm enjoying taking a break from NOD32 on my own PC right now - and the (dubious ??) UnThreat AV has given me less trouble than NOD so far, but I'm watching everything very carefully hoping to catch any tricks it might pull on me.The word 'shady' brings to mind when I was using Kaspersky quite a while back, with very good results - but big as they are, they got very, VERY shady all of a sudden and did some really bad stuff.1st their internet security became hugely crashy after a bad update they sent out - then they blacklisted a bazillion paid users and made everybody pay AGAIN no matter if they had 11 months of their year still paid for - they got very, very bad !!! Then I switched to NOD & never looked back.I think that to be in the AV biz alot of these companies have alot of shady stuff going on and that the worst of them get openly greedy and do stuff like Kaspersky did.This makes me look sideways at ALL the commercial AV names.So right now I have this UnThreat thing - based upon Vipre apparently - and it seems to be working fine so far, from what I can tell.If it does anything that I don't like - before I'll consider going back to NOD it'll be time to give ClamAV + Sentinel a trial run too.From what I can tell from their sites, too many of the commercial freebies have things about them that make them undesirable to me so I want to try out any I can find that are really 100% free & non-commercial and see how that goes for a while.If all else fails I can always go back to fighting it out to make NOD work better, but right now I'm not in any hurry to do that.I do still wonder if anyone else here is quietly trying out UnThreat and/or AVS Firewall ?!?Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobrPatty Posted July 22, 2013 Share Posted July 22, 2013 Just installed UnThreat free edition and am surprised it works on Server. Anyhow it seems to work well. definitions updated smooth and flawless. Just give her a whirl....what have you got to loose. Its free. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smallhagrid Posted July 22, 2013 Author Share Posted July 22, 2013 AVS Firewall turned out to be garbage - but I'm still OK with UnThreat and posted about how my PC is doing things faster now too (http://www.nsaneforums.com/topic/178817-my-pc-got-alot-faster/).Thanks for posting about it here RobrPatty - I hope you'll post back if you're still using it for a while...I'm curious ?!? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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