New to Avast...rootkits and comparison to Norton

[MarcGA]

2 questions:

1. Does the home edition address rootkits?
2. How does Avast compare to Norton, and what problems should I anticipate switching from Norton to Avast on a MS Vista platform?

Thanks.

[DavidR]

Personally no contest avast is lighter on resources, is more flexible and configurable and there are many ex Norton users in the forums who are happy avast users. The thing most mention is how much more responsive their system is.

avast doesn't have an anti-rootkit element but can detect some of the files that would install the rootkit. There are a number of anti-rootkit tools you can run as on-demand.

- BlackLight - It can detect rootkits like Rootkit Revealer but can also remove them. http://www.f-secure.com/blacklight/
- Panda Rootkit Cleaner - http://research.pandasoftware.com/blogs/images/AntiRootkit.zip also see http://research.pandasoftware.com/blogs/research/archive/2007/04/02/Panda-AntiRootkit-Released.aspx or http://www.pandasoftware.com/.
- AVG ANTI-ROOTKIT - AVG Anti-Rootkit http://free.grisoft.com/doc/avg-anti-rootkit-free/lng/us/tpl/v5.
Also see, anti-rootkit, detection, removal & protection http://www.antirootkit.com/software/index.htm.

NAV can be a pain to remove it gets its hooks into everything. After an add remove programs uninstall and reboot you may need to run another application to remove remnants.

A link worth looking at, which is a program removal tool that can remove the remnants of a number of different Norton Programs:
Removing your Norton program using SymNRT
You will need to check on the site if this removal tool is vista compatible.