There are MANY Free Antivirus programs out there today,but even though they win awards and have high detection rates,Which ones actually work under real world conditions?

This is where this review comes in.I Will be doing real world tests on 5 main free anti virus suites,

AVG
Avast Home Edition
Comodo Security Suite
Avira Classic
Spyware Terminator with clamwin


I Will be conducting two tests.

Test 1: Downloading 4 Infected files from a Popular P2P Service (A mix of adware,spyware and virus)

Test 2: Downloading 5 Viruses from VX Heaven (worms/trojans)

Now while im conducting these tests im going to emulate the lesser tech savvy people around us,who take computers at face value.Before i start this review however,im going to show WHY We need antivirus software by doing these tests,with no anti virus protection what so ever.

So,I have my shiny new fresh install of XP Pro SP3 Fully Updated.

Boot Time:33 Seconds
Free RAM:880mb (1gb RAM)

I Downloaded the infected files from frostwire and started to run them all.Now at first i couldnt notice anything! I Mean sure my computer was going slow,and there were a few random messages i noticed,but that's about it.Now i wanted to see what strange processes were running,but CTRL-ALT-DEL Wasnt working! It just WOULDNT Appear!

So i restarted my computer (Twice,First time it froze) and i was greeted with this:



And yet CTRL-ALT-DEL Still wasnt working! So i tried getting to the task manager manually (In the WINDOWS Folder),But when i tried getting to my C:\ Drive:



Nope! Similar story with trying to do it through the command line:



So Something had now hijacked my computer! Now if this wasnt bad enough,i went to internet explorer to start test 2 and low and behold:



Now as i said before,im trying to take my computer at face value like many people do,so i click ok.



It took me too:





Now it wants me to install it,





After installation,Windows popped up:



Telling me that what i have just installed is inable,so props to microsoft for knowing that this is a Scam-virus.

But then,



Now when you click update,now it's wants your money!



If you click cancel,it will then do a 'fake' virus scan to make it sound more appealing



So i closed it all and it seemed to go away,then i noticed,



Two microsoft security centers?

Anyway,it's time to continue to test 2.

Now this is REALLY Sneaky!



So i tried to get to the VX heaven website,
Then
BOTH of these popped up:





So i thought maybe if i restarted my computer it would all go away,So i restarted.

After it got past the welcome screen,it froze at my desktop,i waited 20 minutes and it hadnt moved.No icons,just cursor and my wallpaper.At this point i was ready to end this part ofthe review,but i tried Ctrl-alt-del!



Hey it worked! So i went to run and manually started the explorer,and almost instantly!



So now to part 2 of the test! Now after i managed to get past AV2009's Fake warning pages,i downloaded the viruses from the VX heaven website,as soon as i unzipped them and added the .exe extension i ran them.

Instantly!



So now my computer was PAINFULLY Slow! I Restarted.

Now it froze again,so i tried CTRL-ALT-DEL,



So it was frozen before i could do ANYTHING! And CTRL-ALT-DEL wasnt working!

So i tried safe mode,



So now it's the end of the line! My computer is now un-usable,i have to reinstall windows.


So what have we learnt?

-NEVER Take a computer at face value,always do research.
-ALWAYS have Antivirus software installed

Now you know,which one is right for you? Stay tuned for part 2 of this review!


PART 2




Edited by neodude112320: 26/11/2008 03:21:21 PM

Yeah,I Was quite suprised that i ruined my test bench computer in an hour!

Here is part 2!

Edited by neodude112320: 26/11/2008 03:21:45 PM

I had a client with one of these nasties ... got rid of it by using, of all things, spybot: Seek and destory... did a full scan and then one on reboot on system start up and got rid of the bugger.. Still backup, scanned backup, rebuilt the laptop and restored the data again after... and to be safe ran spybot:seek and destory again on the newly built laptop with the restored data,,,

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...madness be my friend...