"Beginner"

[Spiritsongs]

Since my Norton runs out in a few weeks, I'm looking into 3
possible replacements : Avast, AVG & AntiVir. Castlecops has
a forum on AVG Installation & Setup, but I could not find
something similar here; is there ? I have printed out 4 pages
from the "Home Edition" part of this site & was wondering if
there may be addition info beyond that provided in "Simple
User Interface", "Standard resident protection", etc ? I asked
a knowledgeable person on the manageyourpc forums what
"Limited capability of direct repair ( especially macroviruses)"
means & he was unsure; would appreciate info in this area ?
How does "Web Shield" correlate with the other "Features
Overview" ? Is the "resident protection" activated by default
during the Installation "process" or does one need to go into
the "resident module" & "activate" it ?

[RejZoR]

I belive you'll get most info right here since this is official avast! forum.
To answer you other questions i suggest you ask something more specific,because i don't understand your questions except these two...
For Resident protection you need to install Standard Shiield provider which you can select at install point. After that it's always started automatically when your PC boots up.
Limited capability of direct repair ( especially macroviruses)
means that avast! cannot repair infected files in regular manner. Usually it needs support by VRDB (Virus Recovery DataBase). Thee is not much file infectors anyway in these days. Macroviruses are repaired by removing all macro code from Office file (usually). For more details on file repairing you should wait for someone from Alwil team for more detailed info.

[YLAP]

I want to add what this forum is much better than AVG has (I've used it before avast!, and now you see where I've stayed  ) because I suspect AVG to be not official...  Maybe I'm wrong, but who cares! I'm with avast!

Best wishes from Lithuania! 

[RejZoR]

AVG forum is indeed official,but help goes only user-to-user. GriSoft tech support rarely answer anything and programmers almost don't participate there.
It's alot different here. Tech support and even programmers from Alwil participate here each and every day,many times even on weekends.

[Spiritsongs]

Perhaps I should simply ask : What are the "default" settings
of the "Home Edition" after downloading and installation ?
Is the "Standard Shield provider" the same as "Web Shield"
I see mentioned on the "What's new in avast! version 4.6"
web page ? If not, how do they differ ?

[Fast]

Hello Spiritsongs, welcome to the forum of Avast!

When installing Avast! (make sure any other anti-virus is uninstalled and your pc rebooted) you can use the default settings which are offered to you during installation. It's a step-by-step process and, once finished, your pc is protected.

Don't hurry, read each step carefully and it's almost impossible to make mistakes.

As for a choice in protection: AntiVir is excellent, especially in scanning archives, but has no email-scanner and is a pain in the neck when it comes to updates. AVG is very easy to set up but very difficult when it comes to setting up the email-protection.
Avast! is very complete, has fully automatic updates and installs automatically.
As for the detection-rate, there are no big differences between AntiVir and Avast!  AVG has a bit of a problem here.
If you want a good protection, good support and ease of use, I think Avast! is a good choice.
God bless you.

Fast
 

[YLAP]

Defaul settings are set to normal on all providers.

Web shield is not the same as standart shield. Web shield scans incoming web trafic, standart shield - files created on your pc. So I had more than one case, when web shield blocked virus before standart shiel (infected file wasn't created in my hd, it was blocked before it).

My english is not very good, by I hope that you understood something.

[Fast]

and please read this if any problems occur when trying to remove Norton:
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ent-security.nsf/529c2f9adcf33a1088256e22005026f1/a4d3327506ae7c5f88256b81007b7487?OpenDocument&src=bar_sch_nam

After removal, do a regclean with regcleaner and reboot.

Bye,  Fast

[Spiritsongs]

I have been advised on another forum to be prepared to have
difficulty uninstalling Norton and have their "SymNRT"
Support article. Since my only email accounts are with Hotmail
& Yahoo, do  I need to use any of the anti-virus's email
scanners ? I do help others with their malware protection who
are using Outlook Express and assume the email scanners
would be appropiate there !? "Web Shield" sounds like it may
perform the same function(s) as my Sygate Free firewall; if not
what does "Web Shield" do differently ? I also have an
"evaluation" copy of Registry First Aid from rosecitysoftware;
is this a sufficent "registry cleaner" ?
And no one can tell me, specifically, what are the default
settings of the Home Edition !?
I understand from others that can have 2+ "on demand"
anti-virus scanners, but only 1 "resident protection" anti-virus
program !?
And "Fast" : I have heard similar comments on other forums
about the 3 anti-virus programs, which is why I am here
asking these questions. I am a lot better on anti-spyware
matters.

[Fast]

Hello, just a quick one since I have to go to work in 5 min: Disabling Norton is NOT enough. This Norton-thing is way too invasive and needs to be uninstalled completely and after wards you need to clean the registry. See my previous post about uninstalling Norton and for a registry cleaner see here : http://www.worldstart.com/weekly-download/archives/reg-cleaner4.3.htm

As for the default values of Avast! :you will have the exact balance between good protection and avoiding false positives.

The web-shield protects against malicious scripts in web-pages. This is not performed by a firewall and thus it is a complementary way of protection while surfing. Beware it may cause some alerts when visiting Hotmail though. I'm not sure of it since I don't use Hotmail, but I've read some things about it in another forum, due to the ad's on the Hotmail site which may trigger parental-filters so the same thing could be for webshield, I'm not certain of it but be prepared...

Bye, off to work now, sorry.

Fast.

[Spiritsongs]

A "Norton WMI Update" is listed with my Norton 2004 in my
Add/Remove Programs; will that uninstall along with the Norton following their uninstallation guidelines ? Or is there
"separate" guidelines needed to get rid of it ?

[Fast]

This is needed when you want to install a new Norton av prog (renewal or update). If not, you should deinstall it.

More info here: http://www.networksecurityarchive.org/html/NTBugtraq/2004-12/msg00002.html

Maybe all goes fine and you don't need this info, but just in case.
You might also want to try this: when you still have the Norton cd-rom, insert it and it might offer you to completely uninstall norton. I've done this before and it worked back then.
Fast