Byte by Bite

Don’t run multiple antivirus programs on your computer

by Marv Dealy

“I have Avast!, AVG, and Ad-Aware SE Personal on my computer and running at the same time, and kept up to date. Each of them is the free, personal version. With three computers in the house, I cannot afford $50 each, every year.”

“A week ago, I got malware that occasionally caused my Gateway Celeron laptop to not boot past the opening screen. Gateway answered on the second ring, asked only for the model, serial number and date of purchase (May 2006), and then proceeded to lead me through an extensive clean up campaign that solved my problem—and didn't try to charge or sell me a thing. They asked what I was running, but I don't remember any major grunting noise when I answered with three freebies. They did want me to do a scan daily.”

“What is your advice? And if I need to boil it down to one, which would you recommend?”

Well, Dan, I’ve never won an argument with a “network and PC professional” so I’m not going to start now. They’re pretty much right in this case—using multiple antivirus programs on one computer can cause complications. In fact, sometimes just one antivirus program can cause complications. Which isn’t to say, I hasten to add, that you don’t need one.

We were using one of our computers to serve our email and a few websites and we discovered that Norton AntiVirus thought the email server program was a virus and kept flashing warning bogus warning messages. We turned off Norton AntiVirus and installed AVG and the problem was solved.

That said, you shouldn’t run multiple antivirus programs on a computer because each will think the other is a virus and will fight with each other, slowing down your system performance and possibly leading to system crashes and numerous false alerts.

It is true that there doesn’t seem to be any discussion at any of the sources Dan mentions, but a Google search for “multiple antivirus programs” found numerous forums where the topic was discussed and the opinions were all the same—don’t do it. I did find a security product review at PCWorld.com that reviews the top security suites, spyware programs, rootkit detectors, safer web searching programs and what they call the best free and commercial antivirus software. Check the article out at http://www.pcworld.com/tc/spyware/

As to which one should Dan keep, Ad-Aware isn’t an antivirus program, but looks for malware and adware instead and can be run together with any antivirus program. PCWorld ranked the top ten antivirus programs in this order: In top place, BitDefender, then McAfee, Kaspersky, F-secure, Norton, Panda, AntiVir, Avast, PC-cillin and AVG. Avast scored slightly higher than AVG (77 vs. 73 out of possible 100 score) in PCWorld’s comparison, and they said that AVG had “one of the clunkier interfaces” and “has subpar heuristics” while they said that Avast’s scan speed was slow. A word about McAfee—phone support will cost you $3 a minute if you need help.

So as to which should Dan keep, Avast or AVG, I’d say use a dart board or flip a coin. Then get rid of one.

WiFi Users at Risk—According to an article by Ed Sutherland at InternetNews.com you could be putting your wireless computer at risk the next time you turn it on in a public place, even if you’re not accessing the Internet.

Sutherland says “The flaw, a buffer overflow error in Broadcom’s wireless driver, could allow nearby hackers to execute kernel-mode code.” (http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3643536) He continues that “if Microsoft issued a patch for the flaw it could be of significant help,” but Microsoft had no comment at the time the article was published.

You might want to get on over to the manufacturer of your laptop’s website and see if they have any patches available for their hardware to cover this problem.

Friday Freebie—I know you’ve been wanting to add a second monitor to your computer so you don’t have to bother with opening and closing program windows all the time. Think of it, your browser open in one monitor and your email program open in the other. Or perhaps business applications like Word in one and Excel in another, or Excel and Quickbooks or whatever—you get the idea.

I’ve been a proponent of multiple monitors for years—never work on less than two at a time if I can and three is better. TigerDirect.com has a super deal on a dual head graphics card that lets you plug two monitors into one card, useful if your computer doesn’t have any empty expansion slots. And best of all, it’s free after rebate and as of this writing was getting a 4.5 rating out of 5 in the reviews. Look for item TC3H-1041 at Tiger’s website.

Ferrari Laptop—That’s right, now you can get a Ferrari from Acer to match your Ferrari from, well, Ferrari. Priced at $2,399, the sleek laptop looks as they say way cool with its Ferrari-red design accents and the Ferrari logo on the top and on the keyboard. It’s also about $600 more expensive than a basically identical Hewlett Packard Pavilion dv600z, according to Michele Thatcher at CNET.com (search for Acer Ferrari 5005WLMi).

The Ferrari laptop does come with some sweet stuff such as a dual-core processor, 2GB of RAM, a graphics card with 512MB of dedicated RAM, and a 160GB hard drive. CNET says it also lasted an above-average 3 hours 41 minutes on its battery before quitting. Vroom, vroom.