Saturday, December 4, 2010

HOSTS File

The December MVPS HOSTS file is available today. This is a good day to fire up Spybot, update it, run immunize, and then run search and destroy. Afterwards, download the HOSTS file and install it and rest easy for the next month!

Friday, December 3, 2010

Speaking of AVG...............

This comes from technibble.com

"Yesterday AVG sent out an update that conflicts with 64bit Windows 7 systems. The conflict causes a “blue screen of death” when the system starts with the following message:
STOP: c0000135 The program can’t start because %hs is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.
The makers of AVG have since removed the bad update (3292) and will be releasing a fix program in the coming days.

In order to repair the problem now, users can go into safemode and do a system restore back to a date before the update was downloaded. If users cannot get into safe mode, it is also possible to go into “Startup Repair”, “Repair Your Computer” and choose “View advanced options for system recovery and support” once it finishes scanning.

AVG has also posted additional repair details here if the above does not work."

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Free vs. Fee: Free and Paid Antivirus Programs Compared

If you found the previous two posts of interest, you should read this third part of the package. This article is more generic than the previous 2, but does include product specific information about the top products in each category (fee & free). Many of you may be interested in reading this. This is part 3 of 3 and again comes from pcworld.com.

Also of interest to me is how AVG, my old favorite free antivirus, has apparently fallen out of favor and not kept up with the competition. Also note while you read that both AVAST & AVIRA, like AVG Free, include annoying marketing messages trying to move you up to their fee-based professional versions.

Free vs. Fee: Free and Paid Antivirus Programs Compared

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Top 5 Paid Antivirus for 2011

As a complement to yesterday's post about free antivirus programs, here is a similar list but this time of the fee-based antivirus programs. I try to avoid having to pay for software whenever I can, so I am no personal friend of any of these products, but I know there are plenty of people out there who like, and stay with, their fee-based programs. Keep in mind that for most, if not all, of these fee-based antivirus programs, the fee is an annual one. That's right, you have to pay every year to get the latest version. Check into each one if you are interested, to see exactly how their fee structure works. I am no expert in this.

As was yesterday's post, this review comes from pcworld.com

The specific article named above can be found here: http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/collection/5927/2011_paid_av.html 

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Top 5 Free Antivirus for 2011

This is very interesting, perhaps especially to me. I am happy to see my recommended free antivirus program, Microsoft Security Essentials in what appears to be a virtual tie for second place. I am happy to see MSE ranked so favorably. It is, after all, a fairly new product. I have never thought that an antivirus program alone can do it all for you, and that is why I have a recommended security suite, and not just an antivirus program.

It will be worth your while to check out this web site and the results, provided by pcworld.com.

The review can be found here: http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/collection/5928/2011_free_av.html

If any of you reading this uses Avast, I would be interested in your comments about it. You can comment to this post below or write me at pcdoc@brpcdoc.com.