Avast Free knobbled my laptop

[Polar Bear]

At the moment it is kilking the machine and will have to be removed.   What other av, free and otherwise are people using that they would recommend please?

[Polar Bear]

I'm struggling here.  The laptop has become a useless brick.   I'd download avastclear if I could get the web browser to launch.   Ransomware is how I would describe this rubbish.   It wants £20 to upgrade and I'm not going to pay.

[andyoxon]

Why is the PC 'bricked'/ browser not working?   AVAST, apart from being a tad over zealous in pushing the subscription version, is fine on this PC (Win7).  There is always a way to continue with the free version of Avast IME, when they give a choice for upgrading.

[Polar Bear]

It wants me to renew but won't let me past the option where you choose free or premium.  It won't let me disable it and is hogging resource

Ah, just killed it in safe mode.   

[Polar Bear]

And just to confirm that it was Avast killing the pc I am now able to post this.

I have no av atm though so need a replacement - fast!!!

[Polar Bear]

I have gone back to AVG.   I used it for years and only swapped to Avast as a result of an article in PC Advisor.   All is working as should be once again.

[fuaran]

What version of Windows?
I think MS Security Essentials / Windows Defender is pretty good.
AVG and Avast now both seem to be rather bloated, I'm not sure if they add anything useful.

[Polar Bear]

It's Win 7 Home Premium.

What I notice is how quick the lappie is now.   Avast must have been dragging it down over a number of months.    Perhaps I need to uninstall / reinstall av on a regular basis as part of system maintenance.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

After this incident :


Trojan warning. Avira failure. 

Until yesterday I was using Avira as my anti-virus s/ware.  Over time I had noticed my laptop had been running more slowly and this week it was particularly bad with excessive CPU use and disk access.

It occurred to me it was possibly virus related yet scans with Avira and other anti-malware gave a clean report.  When I looked at other options I discovered that MS Windows defender was getting good reviews so I ditched Avira to try it.

After a full scan of my device, offline and taking nearly 7 hours, Defender reported the presence a severe trojan called swf/infpotok and enabled me to remove it.  After starting my laptop this morning it's now lightning fast!

It seems Avira struggles to deal with this threat.

Interesting. I've seen a few articles like this recently:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/27/gag_free_ex_mozilla_dev_joins_antivirus_roasting_chorus_its_poison/
Yours is the first real world story I've heard.

I have since been using MS Windows Defender.  It seems ok so far.. 

[Dibdib]

I used the built-in Windows one for ages before I drank the Apple Kool-Aid but I remember hearing stories about people having problems caused by running multiple AV packages - effectively they' end up fighting to scan the same files simultaneously, dragging down system performance.

Might be worth checking that Windows Defender is definitely switched off, if you're running something else.

[Polar Bear]

Yup.  Defender most definitely switched off.

I even tried to turn Defender on when avast told me that neither was on but then it sim0ly would not happen.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

When I noticed the freebie anti virus software (Avira) was using a lot of resource I simply uninstalled it, end of.  I was then able to use Defender and first did the Defender scan while off line.  It took c. 7 hours for the deep scan to complete.  After which it removed the Trojan that was causing the problem.   Defender has been on since then.

If you are using MS Windows it seems reasonable to suggest that MS protection is most likely to work -in the absence of evidence to the contrary.

We've reached a stage where cyber security is no longer a minor issue and as I was already trusting MS by using their operating system I decided I might as well trust their security system also.  In the hope that the author of the system would know best how to protect it and are now taking the issue more seriously than they did.  Is that foolish, misplaced optimism?

[Dibdib]

Is that foolish, misplaced optimism?

With Microsoft, usually yes - but Windows Defender seems to prove that even a stopped clock is right sometimes.

[Bluebottle]

I never had an issue with (free) ZoneAlarm AV + firewall, but have recently switched to (paid for) BitDefender. Must admit that I have found less hassle with ZoneAlarm, but that might be due to it being less aggressive. The free version of zonealarm does not do on-access scanning, the paid version does.  The only grump I had with ZoneAlarm was that uninstalling it for some upgrades was a PITA at one point but I think that is fixed now.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

A guided tour of the cybercrime underground

Are the Russians the newer, shinier, go-faster Nigerians?

[fhills]

Avast did something terrible to my own laptop a year or so ago.Sorry, can't remember what the issue was - possibly that it kept telling me it was out of date but wouldn't let me update.