Damned antivirus!

[Hector1]

In the last mounth I search for a free AV to complement VS free and WFC with my W10 laptop (yes, form me the AV is the complementary piece of my setup and VS and WFC are the first and second line of my wall ).
I try Avast for first choice an It never complete a full scan. I try many times, reinstall and no
Then i try Bitdefender free and it abort the installation setup. I try many and many times and no
Then I try AVG free (I hate the ADS for buy AVG tune) and all is good but...it broke my chrome and broke Sandboxie (chrome update don't work and Sandoxie don't start
Last, i do a reimage with my baseline backup and stay with Windows Defender, not the best but it don't broke my PC

 

[Weebarra]

Oh dear that doesn't sound very successful, perhaps try again to install while holding onto a cornicello

 

[Andy Ful]

More is not always better.
I do not like 3-party security.
sincerely yours, 'Windows 10'

 

[Rengar]

Windows Defender is the safest choice here. And its good. But if you want to try other av you can start with Qihoo 360.
Or ditch VS and WFC and go with COMODO Firewall

 

[Andy Ful]

Oh dear that doesn't sound very successful, perhaps try again to install while holding onto a cornicello

I also do not like a cornicello!
'Windows 10'

 

[Deleted member 178]

If i have to use a free AV, i would go Windows Defender. I saw you use VS and WFC which is good enough with WD.

 

[Andy Ful]

You have a pretty good security setup on Windows 10 (Defender + VS + WFC + Sandboxie), with three 3-party programs (VS + WFC + Sandboxie). You can easily spoil this, by installing more.

Edit
If you want to be more secure with the above security layers (without compatibility issues), use more applications from Windows Store (AppContainer) and adopt SUA.
Help Me Decide - Windows Defender vs Comodo Antivirus

 

[shukla44]

IMO, For Win10, the best FREE antivirus option is Windows Defender. Strengthen your default protection, a good ad-blocker & use brain.exe.

If you still need antivirus for your peace of mind, There are many to choose from, but you already tried some. Try Kaspersky free also.

 

[tonibalas]

@Hector1 when you where trying to install the av's or a first time scan what was the setting of VS?
If you have it on Autopilot or Always On maybe it interfeard with the installations of the av's.
I am asking because this has happened to me when i was using VS.

 

[shukla44]

@Hector1 when you where trying to install the av's or a first time scan what was the setting of VS?
If you have it on Autopilot or Always On maybe it interfeard with the installations of the av's.
I am asking because this has happened to me when i was using VS.

Rightly mentioned. I too use VS only during browsing. I have all the other web apps disabled. During installs, i close the browser & put VS in training mode. IMO, the best option to avoid problems. Tried install mode but didn't work quite effectively as training mode.

 

[Hector1]

Windows Defender is the safest choice here. And its good. But if you want to try other av you can start with Qihoo 360.
Or ditch VS and WFC and go with COMODO Firewall

I ever used Comodo Firewall and I like it, but it's was the number 0 and it don't want install in my PC :X3:

 

[Hector1]

@Hector1 when you where trying to install the av's or a first time scan what was the setting of VS?
If you have it on Autopilot or Always On maybe it interfeard with the installations of the av's.
I am asking because this has happened to me when i was using VS.

Very good, i must try with VS disabled

 

[Duotone]

Why burden yourself in pursuing the right AV, you already have WD + VS, WFC, and Sandboxie that's more than enough, another option is to add something that covers exploit like MBAE or HMPA.

 

[ForgottenSeer 58943]

In the last mounth I search for a free AV to complement VS free and WFC with my W10 laptop (yes, form me the AV is the complementary piece of my setup and VS and WFC are the first and second line of my wall ).
I try Avast for first choice an It never complete a full scan. I try many times, reinstall and no
Then i try Bitdefender free and it abort the installation setup. I try many and many times and no
Then I try AVG free (I hate the ADS for buy AVG tune) and all is good but...it broke my chrome and broke Sandboxie (chrome update don't work and Sandoxie don't start
Last, i do a reimage with my baseline backup and stay with Windows Defender, not the best but it don't broke my PC

The realization will arrive that most AV's really do just suck in some way or another. Unfortunately, I've yet run into a problem free, hassle free one. Well, except F-Prot, but I doubt that's very protective. But perhaps with VS it is fine! WD sucks and slows your PC and I have steep privacy concerns with it, but in general seems to cause less hassles.

Keep in mind, VS MAY be your actual problem. I was forced to remove VS because of incessant conflicts, updating issues and random strangeness across the board. Those long shutdowns annoyed me as well. So try your box without VS for a bit perhaps?

Barring that.. Rollback RX w/locked down windows, and just reload the clean snapshot and give up on the security products?

 

[Deleted member 178]

Barring that.. Rollback RX w/locked down windows, and just reload the clean snapshot and give up on the security products?

I won't do that, if bcedit.exe is compromised, Rx may fail to load or cause the Windows boot loader to be damaged.

 

[ForgottenSeer 58943]

I won't do that, if bcedit.exe is compromised, Rx may fail to load or cause the Windows boot loader to be damaged.

If that happens I just flatten it and reload the image I guess. But good point nevertheless.

 

[L S]

You can Start from scratch - Avast Antivirus and Malwarebytes Antimalware with Comodo Firewall & WinPatrol .
(and then decide what you want).
Just a Tip.

 

[Fuzzfas]

I tried to live with Avast for a while, but 1) the GUI was slow as molasses, 2) it was slowing down my FX8350-16GB DDR3 RAM, 3) i saw some weird bugs with the game mode. Bottom line, i ended up with Microsoft Security Essentials (with cloud off). Haven't seen a live malware for ages, with the exception of a friend with a USB flash drive, where Comodo HIPS flagged it.

Today, i don't even bother anymore. I want a simple HIPS (Voodooshield goes bananas when i block it on the firewall, otherwise it would be good), but right now i just keep MSE + AppCheck and it feels it's already overkill...

 

[Fuzzfas]

I won't do that, if bcedit.exe is compromised, Rx may fail to load or cause the Windows boot loader to be damaged.

I agree, not to mention all the bad things Rollback brings with it and can bring with it. However, for a period i followed a similar method: Images, in a folder protected by Secure Folders (folder set to "read only"). The drawback is that it's a bit annoying remembering to unlock the folder every time you want to write to it again, but otherwise it's a perfectly viable solution, since i doubt someone will bother to target Secure Folders. Worst case scenario, a malware destroys the MBR and you will have to use a boot CD or a Linux CD to access the image.

 

[ForgottenSeer 58943]

I agree, not to mention all the bad things Rollback brings with it and can bring with it. However, for a period i followed a similar method: Images, in a folder protected by Secure Folders (folder set to "read only"). The drawback is that it's a bit annoying remembering to unlock the folder every time you want to write to it again, but otherwise it's a perfectly viable solution, since i doubt someone will bother to target Secure Folders. Worst case scenario, a malware destroys the MBR and you will have to use a boot CD or a Linux CD to access the image.

I'm in a good situation right now. I can wipe my machine and be back up and running in about an hour should the virtualization fail.

90% of my stuff is stored on Sync.com, even with Sync's ridiculously good security, encryption and zero knowledge architecture. (3-Layer Encryption, SOC-1 Data Centers, Zero Knowledge, TFA) I still pre-encrypted everything that goes into it with an AES256 and Blowfish combo. Good luck breaking all of that. But this allows me to essentially rebuild my system from scratch in about an hour. The other 10% is stored on encrypted USB-Sticks for local access.

I'm building a new Ryzen 7 productivity machine on Friday w/32GB DDR4 3200 and the new m.2 32Gb/s SSD Drive. When I finish that will be running Windows with 2 VM's and my surfing/productivity/email/business will be done in one of the VM's on a secure OS with a nested VPN on the spoofed NIC. The horsepower will be there to keep those VM's up and loaded with each machine boot.

I've made significant advances in my security/privacy over the last few months and I am not finished yet.