Is windows defender(beta 2) any good?

 

I'm on normal XP home edtion.

I have norton 06 installed. Will it clash with this software or support it?

norton is almost definitely far superior as it is a matured antivirus program meaning that it has stood up to countless tests and is stable.

Defender is spyware only.

 

Norton has spyware detection too. I guess there's no reason in bothering with defender especially since its still beta.

same principle applies. Norton has been doing this stuff for years M$ hasn't.

Heh I can't get windows defender to update its defs (running XP SP2 in VMware)

 

Windows Defender was unable to complete the update: 0x8024001d. The system cannot write to the specified device

 

Google says nothing :/

 

edit: fixed it by deleting C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download

Is norton that reliable (even after a decade of experience) -

 

I ran a scan and its picked up over 100 viruses and 20 spyware and quarantined them automatically.

 

Is it safe to delete all 100+ items from the quarantine log? Most have been classifed as viruses. Some of them are of type "unknown."

 

Not too sure. Also, I think these viruses have been dormant on the system and have just been activated . . .

I'd trust Norton.

 

If anything it is overcautious. It tries to delete joke viruses, which kind of annoys me because there's one which I like and I have on my HDD, whenever Norton scans it tries to delete it.

 

Also when occasionally Avast will pick something which Norton does not.

 

At the end of the day if Norton wanted to delete something, I would look where the file was, if it was a file which I know I added and I trusted it I would leave it (like my joke virus file) however if I did not recognise it I would delete it.

 

Although I might try one thing first. Visit this site:

http://virusscan.jotti.org/

upload the file and see what the results produce. Sometimes that site is slow and there's a wait, but it's worth it.

Norton 06 has been very efficient so far.

 

Ok, thanks.

I don't like Norton. It will sometimes find a virus, and then show an "Access Denied" error when it tries to delete the file. The file is locked because it is being read by the operating system or another program. So, Norton will just ignore the virus instead of trying to delete it later!

 

I once had a virus scanner that would delete any locked virus files the next time the computer started up. I can't remember the name of the virus scanner, but the company that created it doesn't exist anymore.

Avast offers what you mentioned, herme3.

 

That is also one of many advantages a "boot time scan", as offered by Avast, has over traditional scans.