What is worse, a virus or an antivirus?

People purchase anti-virus software to protect against the damage that a computer virus might cause to theirs computers, nobody would like to loose it's files with important documents, source code, etc. and restoring an entire system from scratch is terrible. Many times those disasters can be avoided, also many times users doesn't have the time to test the efficacy of the antivirus selected in preventing such a situation for it's particular case. Usually we are satisfied with the reviews in magazines for doing our selection of such software, and we expect the software to perform as represented.

Sometimes the real results are different from our expectations I remember of a popular antivirus made in South America, Per Antivirus, for the year 2002, my chief decided to buy this antivirus, with the good purpose of "protect the computers against virus". After installing this software in several computers was impossible to use Outlook Express, for sending or receiving emails, the antivirus corrupted the configuration of the e-mail accounts and the general complaint was, "I can't use Outlook after that you installed that antivirus!" Much work was required to restore these settings. There were also changes in the colours of the Desktop and icons of the Windows Explorer (in Windows 98). This antivirus doesn't slow down your computer but provides a very limited protection. The activation of the software was another problem, and it required several hours to activate the software in few of computers, helped by the tech support of the antivirus.

Norton Antivirus, considered to be a professional antivirus, or the world's most trusted antivirus programs, isn't free of complaints. NAV requires dozens of megabytes of RAM memory for it's multiples process (System services and user process); if one of them is not well configured, damaged or is a new product for you, you may get numerous warnings at your screen.

Many Symantec customers were forced to spend an inordinate amount of time recovering from the damage caused by Norton Antivirus until they finally realize the only solution is to remove the Symantec antivirus(or virus?) from their machine for good. This from a program that allegedly will protect us against similar damage from a "real" virus, that might happen once in a lifetime. Of course, when and if that virus attack does occur, this product may not protect us from it at all. After all, it only protects (sometimes) against "known viruses". The "heuristics" for detecting "unknown viruses" sometimes do nothing but trigger false alarms, providing absolutely no real protection against true threats. If you install WinSession Logger remove this program and try another brand of antivirus.

Ironically, most of us have never had a virus attack unless we open every attached file that we receive that was not requested (and have no way of knowing whether or not we are really protected should one occur).  So, NAV's protection is only theoretical for many of us, while its damage has been all too real, causing hours of lost time and feelings of frustration.

In NAV 2004 (and some earlier versions), a simple update program didn't work properly without causing many severe problems, such as reboots, lost opened files and more. Symantec would not acknowledge the full scope of the problem.

I would strongly recommend that you remove all Symantec products from your computer before they cause irreparable damage. You may also be surprised how many "Windows problems" will disappear when you do so. Unfortunately, Symantec has made the process of complete removal very difficult for the novice, and there will be a great deal of residual in your registry and on your hard disk. Fortunately, other than taking up valuable space, leaving the residual files and registry entries will do no harm.

It is a fact that the fewer programs -- especially memory hogs -- your computer runs in background the fewer troubles you will have with Windows. (I remember Panda Antivirus platinum 7, which consumed over 80MB in your disk and used over 150MB of RAM memory). Follow these basic rules to avoid infections with virus:

Rules to avoid or reduce infections with virus

• Don't install programs from Peer to Peer networks, like Kazaa, emule, Ares, etc.
• Don't install any Active X control from any warez site, i suggest you to use Spyware Blaster to avoid the installation of unwanted software by your web browser.
• If you receive an email with an attached file with a exe, scr, com delete it immediately. Apply the same for "unknown extensions", for example .bhk, bbs, reg, pif, etc. Some windows programs uses these extensions and sometimes they are registered in the registry of your computer. For example the .bhk extension is used by the popular Winzip and this extension was used for several virus not much time ago, this security risk still exists for versions older that 9.x. If attached files contain unrecognized extensions, the risk is near of zero.
• If launching and executable file (.exe extension) from a in secure source is unavoidable, then execute with a fully patched and operating antivirus program running in the background. if you don't have a reliable antivirus installed in your PC, try these links:

• BitDefender
• Trend Micro

Also don't forget of doing a incremental backup of your most important data on CDs or other media severals times at week or month, sometimes disk fails.

*Tipically dozens of new virus definitions are being added every month.