Antivirus concern

Bry89

Since last year, I have had Microsoft Security Essentials and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware working together until yesterday, I decided to ditch MSE because of one little nitpick... MsMpEng.exe. That process connected to the program would run at random times without my consent and usually for no reason (but I read somewhere that it would appear when MSE somehow scans itself, which is odd), although it had only happened four times (three last year and once just recently). The worst thing is, I cannot stop it no matter how hard I try and it would take AGES to hog the CPU. What I didn't get was that it began to run when I had Firefox opened two days ago and when I closed it, it stopped, and the cycle happens again when I reopen it. I may be overreacting but it has really been getting on my nerves to the point I had to make the reckless decision to uninstall it. Even though the uninstaller warned me that my system is now more vulnerable, I still have Malwarebytes by my side and to be honest, it's a lot better. I'm surprised Microsoft doesn't even recognise it as a known "antivirus" like how it does for the well-known ones.

So I just want to know... with just Malwarebytes now, am I still protected from viruses/malware/etc? I don't know whether I should get another antivirus program to replace MSE but to be honest, I am close-minded on what's around nowadays as I do not trust Norton or McAfee (which I think anyone would understand why) but I could go for F-Secure... that was on my old computer and that was alright. And by the way, I have the Premium version of Malwarebytes in case anyone thinks I'm just stuck with the Free version, as its real-time protection has been such a life-saver since I had it. I'm still a little concerned though...

thebradad1111

To most stuff out their nowadays, you'll be protected with MalwareBytes. However, I would still recommend an antivirus if you are concerned about getting viruses. This is because MBAM is not really as good at detecting specifically Viruses if I remember correctly. Personally, if you are concerned about speed as well, I would recommend getting ESET Nod32. I have had little to no problem with it over the past decade and have been using it on slower machines as well as faster ones.

PS: With ESET Nod just turn of startup scans and it hardly uses anything at all. Also if you were using MSE and got nothing bad, then you'll probably be fine with MBAM alone.

timjames474

Panda Antivirus free has done me well and is extremely easy on resources. I used to use it on a athlon XP with 512 MB of RAM running XP and didn't have much issue. My friend also uses Panda and says it only uses up 4MB of RAM idle.
Still use that XP, but it has more RAM due to the increasing requirements by websites and browsers

Plokite_Wolf

Turned my back on MSE once it had a computer-crippling bug on Windows XP shortly after it lost support.

As for the others, I don't know if any antivirus has a reasonably low rate of false positives. Just avoid Avast, Avira and especially AVG.

Bry89

thebradad1111 wrote:

To most stuff out their nowadays, you'll be protected with MalwareBytes. However, I would still recommend an antivirus if you are concerned about getting viruses..

Yes, I knew that Malwarebytes doesn't detect everything, just usually of PUPs and more dangerous stuff (especially ransomware because, Premium). And, I'd only be really concerned about viruses if I go on dodgy sites that offer cracked software and such, which any person with common sense wouldn't do, and as if a virus would randomly pop up out of nowhere and wreck my system in a flash. Also, you're right, MSE hasn't detected anything since I had it, even from a fortnightly scan I am prompted to do so, I guess I should be safe with just Malwarebytes.

Plokite_Wolf wrote:

Turned my back on MSE once it had a computer-crippling bug on Windows XP shortly after it lost support.

As for the others, I don't know if any antivirus has a reasonably low rate of false positives. Just avoid Avast, Avira and especially AVG.

That's funny... I have AVG on my WinXP VM and once had Avira on my much older computer, after I got rid of McAfee for being a nagging son of a bitch. I should note that I didn't have Avira for long and just had Kerio Personal Firewall to protect me for the next three years of it.

SomeGuy

I've also got the free AVG on an XP VM, the last couple years it has increased the amount it nags, trying to get me to add some extra crap.

Interestingly it does detect old DOS boot sector viruses and such in disk images.

And it will take every opportunity to remind you how valuable it has been after it has found and "fixed" something.

Shitty user interface too.

calvinb

AVG post-7.5 is crap.

I myself run with only the AV included with Windows nowadays, as I don't use pre-8 as my daily driver.

BigCJ

Avast! Free and MBAM are all an average user needs. I run them together on a 5yr old laptop w/Win7. Performance is still great and everything's locked down nice and secure.

Plokite_Wolf

SomeGuy wrote:

And it will take every opportunity to remind you how valuable it has been after it has found and "fixed" something.

I'd put "found" in quotation marks too

Bry89

SomeGuy wrote:

I've also got the free AVG on an XP VM, the last couple years it has increased the amount it nags, trying to get me to add some extra crap.

Interestingly it does detect old DOS boot sector viruses and such in disk images.

And it will take every opportunity to remind you how valuable it has been after it has found and "fixed" something.

Shitty user interface too.

Eh, the user interface is alright... but then again it was the 2014 version my VM has. I also personally think it adds so much bloat also and to think Norton was very good at doing that. I could go ahead and ditch that also but that would be left unprotected more than the host system. Makes me wonder if there's any other antivirus that can work well for XP, even though all others dropped their support for it and that security threats for it would still exist.

By the way, I changed the topic title. I should admit that the original title was a bit bleh.

gnect094

For me is the best Kaspersky

garirry

I originally had AVG. It was free, it was great, it worked fine. But then it started giving popups that I should enable toolbars, web protection, stupid shit like that. It annoyed me so much I uninstalled it. Later, all I did afterwards was install Malwarebytes and occasionally run a scan. It doesn't cause any problem and it would notice me if there's any crap I accidentally downloaded, which doesn't really happen to me because I don't download random crap.

dosbox

BigCJ wrote:

Avast! Free and MBAM are all an average user needs. I run them together on a 5yr old laptop w/Win7. Performance is still great and everything's locked down nice and secure.

I don't think Avast an really be trusted at all these days, as they've been doing some shady things lately. I really don't trust any antivirus program at all really.

Bry89

dosbox wrote:

I really don't trust any antivirus program at all really.

I'm the same. Guess I'll just stick with MBAM then. And, mind telling me what things Avast have done that are deemed "shady"?

BigCJ

dosbox wrote:

BigCJ wrote:

Avast! Free and MBAM are all an average user needs. I run them together on a 5yr old laptop w/Win7. Performance is still great and everything's locked down nice and secure.

I don't think Avast an really be trusted at all these days, as they've been doing some shady things lately. I really don't trust any antivirus program at all really.

I don't know what you mean by shady, but I never had a reason to doubt it. I even introduced malware samples to a system to test performance and avast! nipped that in the bud right quick. I'll stick with them until there's a bonafide reason not to. Unconfirmed rumors of 'shady things' do not qualify as valid reasons to me.

Plokite_Wolf

Bry89 wrote:

dosbox wrote:

I really don't trust any antivirus program at all really.

I'm the same. Guess I'll just stick with MBAM then. And, mind telling me what things Avast have done that are deemed "shady"?

Don't know about shady, but more like hogging resources and a dash of paranoia...

dosbox

Bry89 wrote:

dosbox wrote:

I really don't trust any antivirus program at all really.

I'm the same. Guess I'll just stick with MBAM then. And, mind telling me what things Avast have done that are deemed "shady"?

Installing things that users don't want, HTTPS hijacking (actually most antivirus programs do this), etc, etc

Bry89

Tch, how lame. It's ironic that these programs say that they will protect and free you from any harm done to your system, yet they cause harm themselves. Why must they do that?

With that known, it seems that only MBAM (and maybe F-Secure, though that's only from personal experience) can only be trusted nowadays. What a shame.

Doqtor Kirby

I always read MBAM as MBAN (a doujin fighting game).

AVG is pretty cool imo, but I'm also not anal about having these programs out of the way 110% of the time.

Bry89

Bumping this thread with another thing I've been pondering about. Since I had MSE removed, I still have Windows Defender and this is the question I've been itching to ask... is it safe to remove that too, when I have MBAM that does the exact same (though better) job as it?

timjames474

Bry89 wrote:

Bumping this thread with another thing I've been pondering about. Since I had MSE removed, I still have Windows Defender and this is the question I've been itching to ask... is it safe to remove that too, when I have MBAM that does the exact same (though better) job as it?

As far as I know Windows Defender is built into Windows and cannot be safely removed. Anyone here is welcome to correct me on that. Best of luck!

RetroMacUser1999

I use ClamWin, an open source AntiVirus when using any XP machine, even my late 90's Gateway (Performance 1400) Workstation, which was previously used for QuickBooks and other stuff, now is my retro gaming setup, with a Microsoft SideWinder (1st generation), SoundBlaster Live! Sound card, and an ATI Radeon 9200SE 128 MB.