Battle Most Lightweight: Avast Free Antivirus vs Panda Dome Free?

Wraith

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Aug 15, 2018
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I am torn between Avast Free and Panda Free. I may be wrong but Panda generally feels lighter on my system. And lately Avast has been displaying too many ads and I've also seen concerns regarding their telemetry. OSArmor will be used alongside the antivirus.
 

imuade

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I am torn between Avast Free and Panda Free. I may be wrong but Panda generally feels lighter on my system. And lately Avast has been displaying too many ads and I've also seen concerns regarding their telemetry. OSArmor will be used alongside the antivirus.
It depends on every PC, so you have to try in yours and see.

I'm currently using Avast (File Shield only) with Hardened Mode on Aggressive and it's extremely lightweight.
If you use OSArmor, you can avoid Avast Behavior Shield (which caused high CPU usage on my PC).
You can also avoid the Web Shield and use a filtered DNS (for example, CleanBrowsing DNS) or a dedicated Web Filtering (for example, the one offered by FortiClient).
This is basically my current setup: SECURE: Basic - imuade's security configuration

About Avast ads and telemetry, you can block the ads by blocking outbound connections to avastUI.exe and you can block telemetry by blocking the IP addresses shown here Avast Free Antivirus (2018) - Product Screenshots
 
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Al-Faqir

Level 8
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Jul 24, 2018
379
On Windows 10, you can do Reset. No need to mess around with any installation media or license keys. You might be better off with some system image software, that you revert to previous state.

I do use Ashampoo Backup Pro and I do have an always-up-to-date system image. But I always prefer a clean system install After testing a security product.
 

conceptualclarity

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My AVs this year have been first Panda Pro and then Avast IS. I found Panda light on the RAM but all too often demanding on the processing. (I had the same experience several years earlier with Panda free.) I found Avast IS heavier on the RAM but much easier on the processing. I prefer Avast, because I can cope more easily with high RAM usage than with processing blitzkriegs. I use CacheMan to trim the memory usage, although I think you can do pretty much the same thing with the freeware System Explorer. I also kill what the Process Explorer tree view shows me to be subordinate browser processes to free up memory. That works with Maxthon and with Chromium family browsers. (Kill the main process and the browser shuts down, of course.)

Not to mention Panda leaves behind driver traces if you decide to remove it later on..

Probably not unique to Panda. What this demonstrates is that when you install a security program you need to do it with a traced installation. You can get that with Revo Uninstaller Pro and some other uninstaller sharewares. (Revo Pro is never on giveaway but other uninstaller sharewares do turn up often on daily giveaway sites.) Somebody here probably knows a free program that can do that. Oh, I believe I remember Advanced Uninstaller Pro--actually a freeware--does traced installations, although I've never tried it.

If you forget to do that, look in system32 and take note of what's just been added in the way of drivers.

I would also suggest you look for a special uninstall software which most of the AV companies make for their products. And you should definitely utilize Revo (free or pro) and IObit Uninstaller and Geek Uninstaller in the AV uninstalling. I know from much experience that running multiple uninstalling softwares simultaneously will not bring you grief, assuming you don't have a horrible resources bottleneck.

Another thing: if you're wanting to get rid of drivers manually, you need to first get rid of their registry keys. Otherwise you can get shut out of Windows. Good registry editors like RegScanner by NirSoft will do keyword searches that will help you find the keys you need to delete.
 
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kev216

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Without doubt Panda is the lightest. Panda dome runs even smooth on my 16 years old pentium 4 windows xp machine with only 512mb ram.
You won't see a single ad if you disable the sliders "show Panda news" and "Show relevant security news" in the general tab of the settings.
 

RoboMan

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Jun 24, 2016
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If you use OSArmor, you can avoid Avast Behavior Shield (which caused high CPU usage on my PC).
Please don't disable Avast Behaviour Shield. Lots of components and responses Avast makes are tied, lightly or strongly, to this specific component. OSArmor is great as a complement but nowhere can replace a behaviour blocker/analyzer, specially at this moment when it's a kind of new product and so vulnerable/weak to executable files. Video - OSArmor vs malware - RoboMan
 

Moonhorse

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May 29, 2018
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Whenever I decide to remove a security product, I do a clean Windows install!
Ive changed my av tons of times, without backup/ clean install. Not that ive had any errors ever with av ex drivers :unsure:

I have disabled access to registry anyways, but had to delete firefox completely because of annoying extension, same with panda extension wich is PUP
 
L

Local Host

@conceptualclarity so far I only found Panda doing that, I was helping a Client with GPU drivers and found 5 traces of Panda Drivers in the process.

The Client didn't had any Panda Product installed, and then tested in a VM environment and even with the Panda Removal Tool the drivers are not removed.

Avira, BitDefender, ESET, Kaspersky and Malwarebytes left no driver traces (not that they had them in the first place), I didn't test with any other Software so far.

Dead regedit keys and appdata folders are fine, but leaving drivers behind is bad.
 

Cortex

Level 26
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Aug 4, 2016
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@conceptualclarity so far I only found Panda doing that, I was helping a Client with GPU drivers and found 5 traces of Panda Drivers in the process.

The Client didn't had any Panda Product installed, and then tested in a VM environment and even with the Panda Removal Tool the drivers are not removed.

Avira, BitDefender, ESET, Kaspersky and Malwarebytes left no driver traces (not that they had them in the first place), I didn't test with any other Software so far.

Dead regedit keys and appdata folders are fine, but leaving drivers behind is bad.

Hi: Can you specify the names of the drivers left behind by Panda please?
 

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