question about avgfree 8.5 and avast home

[theinvulnerable]

recently i have avast pro installed on my pc thats my friend license, but i uninstalled it and replace by avgfree 8.5  because im disappointed about the virus that avast not detected it, even if it is updated daily and i often scanning for viruses. One time i make a word document save to my new flashdrive. Then when i print out at the shop that uses avgfree 8.5 they detect it. But now i also want to installed avast home because it has an anti-rootkit that avgfree don't have. Now my question, what you would recommend me to run in the background in terms of resident scanner, the avast or avg? Im dissapointed also when im scanning avgfree 8.5  takes 1 hour 40 min while avast just nearly an hour. Im hoping for your best and honest answer.

Thanks...

[ilker]

I think using avast would be better choice because as you said it has more features than AVG and avast! is better in catching malware. ( you can check virus test web sites ) If you use additional softwares like Windows Defender, Spyware Terminator or ThreatFire everything will be fine.
And please use web shield with silent mode because according to my experiences sometimes web shield can be leaky eventhough you press Abort Connection and standart shield catches the threat. With silent mode web shield immediatelly aborts the connection and it doensn't give time to the threat to download itself. 

[DavidR]

No one program is going to detect everything 100% in a recent comparison avast gained a 98.2% detection rate, avg8 was I believe behind that, that still leaves 1.8% no one got 100%

As you found avast is faster coming forth in the test with avg8 behind it.

I abandoned avg a little over 5 years ago for avast and I haven't looked back.

Another fact that just because one AV detects it doesn't mean that it it is actually infected and all AV suffer to some degree from false positive detections, avast is no different. There is a site virustotal with 40 different scanners that we have people check suspect files at to confirm or deny the detection.

So without any detailed information or analysis I can't say one way or another, what I can say is if you changed your AV every time it missed a single detection it wouldn't take long before you tried them all.

You can only have one resident AV and my recommendation is use one that suits your needs and that is a decision only you can make. Me I know what suits me and has looked after me in the five years that I have had avast, not to mention in the free avg version  it doesn't have anti-spyware or anti-rootkit detection or some of the other functions that are available in the free version of avast.

[theinvulnerable]

How to configure it silent mode? btw the virus i'm talking about is brontok, i don't remember the exact name. I know its not 100% thats why i want to use 2 antivirus installed on 1 pc. Is that possible or not? I have spybot S&D teatimer is active on startup and malwarebytes. The antivirus currently installed is avgfree 8.5, and i want to installed also avast home. Tell me how to mixed it up this softwares for a 512mb of ram ddr2.

[DavidR]

Having two resident scanners installed is not recommended as rather than provide twice the protection it can cause conflicts that could leave you more vulnerable. Resident AVs have low level device drivers that could conflict that conflict could be minor in multiple alerts on the same file to serious locking your system to very serious a failure to boot.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean to configure silent mode given your trying to run two AVs.

[ilker]

To use web shield with silent mode click on avast ball > web shield > customize > advanced  and check the box. 

[DavidR]

Personally I wouldn't use silent mode as the web is a potential mine field and you want all the notice you can get of malware on a site.

[Tarq57]

My experience is similar to that of DavidR.
I believe the free version of Avast will perform better than the free version of AVG. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it performs as well as or better than the paid version of AVG.

Slightly off topic, I have never experienced the web shield failing to block malware downloading while awaiting a response from the user (and I've seen the webshield alert a lot of times.) Are you absolutely sure that's what happened, ilker, and did you report it on the forum at all?

[ilker]

No i haven't reported it because i don't experience this very often. I saw that the download was active until i press abort connection. Also i can show you a video of it and you will understand me better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iquamx6LY0w [01:55]

In the video you will see that the user presses abort button but then we see standart shield alert because  part of malware downloaded to temporary int. files until we decide what to do.

[Tarq57]

I do see that, but wonder why the caution window is being displayed by the security centre on the system tray?
Also wonder, since this is about number three on a series of random tests, whether it is one of the previous tests that cause that alert?
Interesting video, but to tell the truth I am unconvinced.
I suspect you've disabled the firewall to facilitate the tests (hence the yellow shield).

[mevcit]

Personally I wouldn't use silent mode as the web is a potential mine field and you want all the notice you can get of malware on a site.

When it is set to silent mode, you will be noticed by a notification just above the system tray if a malicious content is detected on a website. At the same time the web shield will quarantine the content and will abort the connection immediately. So you'll be noticed both when it is set to silent mode and when it is not.

Web shield is so important since a website containing a malware which is detected by avast may possibly have more malicious content that avast may not detect, and the possible threats will be mostly prevented by aborting the connection immediately. Hence the web shield should cut the website connection as fast as it can. If you wait for pressing "Abort connection" button for a while, the web content will carry on flowing to the hard disk during that while. In this connection i agree with what ilker stated.

[DavidR]

This can easily be missed as it isn't there very long and what information displayed, exact page and malware name would not remain visible as in the alert window.

Sorry but your understanding of how the web shield works isn't correct - The web shield doesn't quarantine anything, it just aborts the connection in silent mode.

The alert window is effectively an abort connection as the file is still in the web shield proxy (well an avast temp location as a unp9999999.tmp file, the 999999 are random numbers) and not on your system so there is no problem in taking your time to gather and take in the information displayed. I do this lots when investigating alerts reported by users in the forums and the file is never downloaded to the temporary internet files/browser cache, my default browser is firefox 3.0.8.

[Lisandro]

Well, here is difficult to find a non-biased info.
I'm an ex-AVG user and I drop it due to lack of updates (number of servers), lack of configurability, lack of support (specially on forums).
Not a software is perfect and maybe avast could lose some malware. But AVG will do the same in other times, for sure.
The on-demand scanning time of avast has improved (but still there are room for improvement).

Well, I'm not theinvulnerable

[mevcit]

Sorry but your understanding of how the web shield works isn't correct - The web shield doesn't quarantine anything, it just aborts the connection in silent mode.

Yes, sorry, i was wrong here, i didn't wanna mean that actually. The object (which isn't restorable) in the quarantine is just for notification for users (when the silent mode is enabled). See the attachment.

This can easily be missed as it isn't there very long and what information displayed, exact page and malware name would not remain visible as in the alert window.

You can also take a look at the quarantine. Avast puts a notification there too, just as in the attachment.

The alert window is effectively an abort connection as the file is still in the web shield proxy (well an avast temp location as a unp9999999.tmp file, the 999999 are random numbers) and not on your system so there is no problem in taking your time to gather and take in the information displayed. I do this lots when investigating alerts reported by users in the forums and the file is never downloaded to the temporary internet files/browser cache, my default browser is firefox 3.0.8.

Ok, it holds the concerned content without letting it enter to the system until we press the abort connection button - as it should be. What about the rest of the content of the web site? Does web shield let them flow or not? I think it will not interfere with them unless it detects sth. I'm trying to tell this. And my statement is that it should abort the connection immediately to prevent even the possible threats which i mentioned in my previous message.

[DavidR]

It would entirely depend on what was detected as infected if it was the actual html page then nothing would be displayed as the html page wouldn't get into the browser cache. If it were another element like an image then perhaps a partial page load would occur.

Since you haven't expanded the column we can't see what the file name is as it is unusual to see a URL in the Name field and a blank original location field.