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> I had some problems updating it for a while... Oh yeah, I forgot about that -- though I don't know how, it was a serious pain for several months. Avira's up

> I had some problems updating it for a while... Oh yeah, I forgot about that -- though I don't know how, it was a serious pain for several months. Avira's update servers were located in Germany, and would completely fall over every time the continental U.S. decided to update. If your update schedule was done in the middle of the night, it wasn't so bad. Avira-the-company at first blamed its user's network connections, and then admitted that their update servers were completely overwhelmed. They do seem to have recently fixed this, but only in the last month or so, so we're still waiting to see if it's a long term fix or not. If this happens to you, you can always run a manual update. Go to http://www.avira.com/en/support/vdf_update.html http://www.avira.com/en/support/vdf_update.html , download the file, then go to Avira's control panel. I think the menu is labeled "Tools", and "Manual Update" is below that.

prawn 17y ago
Do you bother doubling up with Windows Defender at all? Or just recommend running Avira solo? The reason I ask is that Defender is a bit of a memory hog and I wouldn't be unhappy about getting rid of it. What about SpywareGuard and SpywareBlaster? I previously used AVG but found it very annoying. Currently using Defender, SG, SB and then any clean-ups with MBAM.
- thaumaturgy 17y ago
  We don't bother with Defender in XP; Vista's version seems to be a little better, although that might just be an artifact of running on newer machines. I haven't had a chance to play with Windows 7 yet, unfortunately. Avira by itself has been fairly successful for us (but we also encourage clients to use Firefox+AdBlockPlus, which stops a popular virus vector). The only hiccup we've had was with a new version of "Windows Security 2009" that slipped past Avira for a couple of days and spread by Outlook address books. MalwareBytes didn't find it either, but fortunately it's easy to remove manually. The little bit that I've worked with SpywareGuard, I've liked it, with the caveat that it can require a lot of user interaction during software installs. Haven't used SpywareBlaster.
  - prawn 17y ago
    Thanks for taking the time to respond. I've switched from Defender to Security Essentials and I'll check out Avira. I run a few sites that depend on ads so I've been reluctant to use an ad-blocker, but it might make sense to look into it. Thanks again.

prawn 17y ago

Do you bother doubling up with Windows Defender at all? Or just recommend running Avira solo? The reason I ask is that Defender is a bit of a memory hog and I wouldn't be unhappy about getting rid of it. What about SpywareGuard and SpywareBlaster? I previously used AVG but found it very annoying. Currently using Defender, SG, SB and then any clean-ups with MBAM.

thaumaturgy 17y ago
We don't bother with Defender in XP; Vista's version seems to be a little better, although that might just be an artifact of running on newer machines. I haven't had a chance to play with Windows 7 yet, unfortunately. Avira by itself has been fairly successful for us (but we also encourage clients to use Firefox+AdBlockPlus, which stops a popular virus vector). The only hiccup we've had was with a new version of "Windows Security 2009" that slipped past Avira for a couple of days and spread by Outlook address books. MalwareBytes didn't find it either, but fortunately it's easy to remove manually. The little bit that I've worked with SpywareGuard, I've liked it, with the caveat that it can require a lot of user interaction during software installs. Haven't used SpywareBlaster.
- prawn 17y ago
  Thanks for taking the time to respond. I've switched from Defender to Security Essentials and I'll check out Avira. I run a few sites that depend on ads so I've been reluctant to use an ad-blocker, but it might make sense to look into it. Thanks again.