This old chestnut..

[Jem]

I apologise in advance for this:

I'm currently running the MSE Beta on Win 7 64 Bit - runs trouble free, but keeping an eye on the Microsoft Answers forum, I'm disturbed by the large number of posts describing situations where MSE can't remove a virus / trojan that it finds on someone's PC. I know that no solution is 100% protection and that people will always download things they shouldn't etc etc..., but the 'no solution is 100%...' answer seems to be a little overused on that forum of late.

So, I'm trying to establish if Avast is likely to be any better at 'removal' (in general) than MSE but can't seem to find any reliable view on this. I hope it's OK to ask for views on this here, and I'm hoping that someone might be aware of any removal test results that might be out there...or any other indications as to which one might be better...

Difficult one probably...

Thanks.

[CraigB]

Avast and MSE discusions are already happening in this thread http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=91694.0 so you might find your answers there.

[Gargamel360]

A truly honest opinion.   Avast! is about average when it comes to removal.  Where it excels is prevention.

I apologise in advance for this:

Hardly an apology needed, are you afraid of prickly fanboys?

I know that no solution is 100% protection and that people will always download things they shouldn't etc etc..., but the 'no solution is 100%...' answer seems to be a little overused on that forum of late.

Oh, trust me, it gets overused here also.  But that is because its a fact.  Most of those infections you are looking at are probably rootkit-related....where the AV keeps cleaning the infection, but it keeps returning?  Those are hard for any AV to get its fingers on once it is installed.  Specialized tools are nearly always required for a full clean-up.

Avast has one thing that helps in that regard....the Network Shield is very good at stopping the invader from downloading even more malware or attempting to connect out to send away your data.  Again, this does nothing to kill the existing infection....but it stops it from doing what it really wants to do.

[Jem]

A truly honest opinion.   Avast! is about average when it comes to removal.  Where it excels is prevention.

I apologise in advance for this:

Hardly an apology needed, are you afraid of prickly fanboys?

I know that no solution is 100% protection and that people will always download things they shouldn't etc etc..., but the 'no solution is 100%...' answer seems to be a little overused on that forum of late.

Oh, trust me, it gets overused here also.  But that is because its a fact.  Most of those infections you are looking at are probably rootkit-related....where the AV keeps cleaning the infection, but it keeps returning?  Those are hard for any AV to get its fingers on once it is installed.  Specialized tools are nearly always required for a full clean-up.

Avast has one thing that helps in that regard....the Network Shield is very good at stopping the invader from downloading even more malware or attempting to connect out to send away your data.  Again, this does nothing to kill the existing infection....but it stops it from doing what it really wants to do.

Thanks for all that (and yes, to the fanboy question )
More for me to ponder on...

[ady4um]

If I may, I think that the real help on "cleaning" or "removal" is more a manual, knowledge, intelligence issue, more than about a specific software. Specially, with so many new malware and different malware types every day.

I would say that when avast (or any other security tool for that matter) shows you some sign of a suspect, the user needs to get help from people (users) that REALLY know what they are doing. In that sense, you will find here in the forum other users that will help you step by step, specially is you are already using avast (as forum members here will take the correct info from avast so to give you better steps or specific tools for you to run).

Reading the "Viruses and Worms" subforum may give you a partial (but helpful) idea, with more difficult cases and others not so much.