What is your story about the first AV that you used ?

[Ashu Kumar]

When MalwareTips captured my attention (it sounded so much like Mawarebytes!)

I thought i was the only one on this. I too thought that they were synonymous and have the same origin.

 

[mercurial]

Well, my computer knowledge was down the gutter when i started into security. I used to have constant infection (ummm i shared a lot of floppies) I had no idea what was wrong and why my pc would go crazy on me from time to time.

I was an Angry kid, it held me back from playing my beloved Road Rash, and i could bare no more! so i started researching(think i was using a mix of Spybot Search and destroy and a couple of things i don't remember). I then asked my father how they protected his pc at his work place and he connected me to tech guy at his work place, few days later i ended up with McAfee Virus Scan Enterprise 8.0, i was blown away, this piece of software was light, did it's job and kept my pc running as i wanted to. After a year of further research i uninstalled McAfee and tried Ad-Aware, Sunbelt and other such products, i then started of with Avast 4.0 and at that time it looked damn revolutionary!

Fast Forward a few years more, and now i know of so many security products, half the time when i recommend security suites to friends and family they all go like which is this new company? LoL, anyway in my place people know ESET as Nod, they will be baffled when you ask them if you know about ESET but say Nod and people start nodding .

 

[souhrid]

My first av was avast with a music player interface.

 

[Oxygen]

My first av was avast with a music player interface.

What year?

 

[Cch123]

My first antivirus was Avast and I also used Malwarebytes and Spybot Search and Destroy as on demand scanners. So much has changed since the first few versions of these software: I can still remember Malwarebyte's red logo, how popular and good Spybot was and yes, Avast's music player interface ( version 4 I think)

 

[mercurial]

My first antivirus was Avast and I also used Malwarebytes and Spybot Search and Destroy as on demand scanners. So much has changed since the first few versions of these software: I can still remember Malwarebyte's red logo, how popular and good Spybot was and yes, Avast's music player interface ( version 4 I think)

Yup version 4 had an option of adding skins which you could download if i remember correctly. Oh the good times, also for that time Avast! had a really cool icon set and when you used to get "Avast has been Updated"

 

[Viking]

My first computer I had was back in 1988 for school purposes ( an XT, I think it was ) with no internet connection. Then in late 2003 I bought my first pc with an internet connection, it had Norton Internet Security installed (3 month trial). I remember renewing the lisence as I thought Norton was the only antivirus company on the planet.

My uncle told be of a nice on demand scanner called Spybot Search & Destroy which I used back in 2004.

When it came to computer security, I was a complete novice ten years ago!

 

[Ashu Kumar]

Yup version 4 had an option of adding skins which you could download if i remember correctly. Oh the good times, also for that time Avast! had a really cool icon set and when you used to get "Avast has been Updated"

"Avast has been Updated" : historic

 

[Ashu Kumar]

I remeber renewing the lisence as I thought Norton was the only antivirus company on the planet

and I remember ransacking the internet to download virus definitions to update my McAfee (my first AV) as i thought that McAfee was the only AV on the planet and had a belief that if i could get virus definitions, I would extend the expiration date of its license.(someone injected this idea into my mind, so ignorant I was!)

 

[sona]

I bought my first pc in the year 2006(win xp, 40gb hdd,512M ram ) mcafee virusscan enterprise 8.0i was installed there. Two years ago i crushed its cpu with my world famous free kicks and penalty shots(As it was became so fast then ).And rest part sold only at Rs. 500!!.
I brought kaspersky 2012 for my new pc in the yr 2012 , and also previous year 2013. Now i have none

 

[kiric96]

I remember that my first AV was eset v3.0 . by that time i thought that the pc was infected so i asked my uncle to give me an AV them i ran into my house and make a scan of course nothing was found /i had no idea that an AV needs to be updated and of course the databases were almost a year old/

Another uncle gave me mcafee viruscan with the current database /actually he uses to give the updates once a week/ and of course this time found some weird things under the name of artemis***** i have no idea what that meant but i felt happy because the AV did work... and like that was almost a year.

then back to eset, due to the fact that i didnt have internet in my house, some body told me that i can update the AV by copy and paste the em0**.nup files from eset directory (of course from an updated pc). It was a task for every single time i visit the cyber, first thing to do was to update eset /here eset and avast are most widely used AV/ just copy the modules to my usb flash drive then in my house boot the pc into safe mode and paste the files... that was almost for 3 years.

my first infection /real one/ came bundled with a DD that was infected with win32/jatdre (bitdefender name) /win32/wapomi(eset name)/ the whole DD was infected... the cleaning process took ages... well when it finished i had the great idea of executing one of the infected files.... and of course all the exe files were infected in seconds then i restart the pc and eset was not able to start at all... i was scared xD then i started to check all process that were active and finally i discover and unknown process that was hidden in svchost.exe, i killed that process then start eset again and it did work... eset started to disinfect all the damaged files xD then again turned off eset and execute the virus... this time i paid attention to every single file created and every registry... (by that time i didnt have idea what i was doing, by i just follow all eset pop up). Some one told me that norton was a great AV then i swithced to (..) but it wasnt good but that is another story

And well like that started a hobbie.... every single malware that i use to found in USB drives i keep it for analysis... and well here i am xD years later.... all this happened when i was 13 yrsold

 

[mercurial]

I used to download the Avast Offiline update pack from a friend's place once every week,downloading that 40mb took forever on dial-up and god forbid if your connection dc'd around 38/39 mb. That brought out another level of savagery lol.

 

[souhrid]

What year?

2008 or 2009 i don't remember correctly

 

[jerzy601]

I was the first anti-virus program Avast Free Version 4.8 was in 2008, it was my first computer I had this program for about two years and then changed to AVG Free, and then after some years changed on Premium Avire because I was able to win the competition in which .

 

[Warrior]

my first AV Dr. Solomon's Anti-Virus 1991, for Microsoft Windows (up to 98)

 

[Deleted member 21043]

Long story short: On the family PCs when I was maybe 8 or 9, family members had tried: Norton, McAfee and AVG. Those were the ones everyone seemed to know back then, for some reason. I had never heard of Emsisoft, ESET, Avira etc until a few years later.

After using either of them, it always resulted in the current PC being "ruined" (I wonder who's fault that was ). Don't even know what I typed in Google anymore (never remembered) to get all the infections as a kid, using the internet...

 

[NullPointerException]

Back in the 80's...err, was it 90's? In the early 1991, I think it was F-PORT? All I remember is the following, now-embarrassing for someone who solves the heck out of algorithms and worked for the govt, story of mine.

In a cold winter night, I got my first IBM PC in 1991/2 , then our PC, in about three months, after I tried to watch too much porn and installed too many software, got infected with various malware...We called the local technician (I still remember the sir, he is a very kind and intelligent person. I miss him, he's still in India.) and he told us that we've got a "virus" (Note : He didn't use the term 'malware') on our PC. He installed F-port on our PC, and got it running like new again. So I installed the aforementioned Giant AntiSpyware, SUPERANTISPYWARE and other TONS of anti-malware.

All I could say is that he had to re-install Windows/whatever-we-were-using-at-that-time every time he visited our little home.
(He sometimes hit me on stomach for my folly.)

 

[Deleted member 21043]

Back in the 80's...err, was it 90's? In the early 1991, I think it was F-PORT? All I remember is the following, now-embarrassing for someone who solves the heck out of algorithms and worked for the govt, story of mine.

In a cold winter night, I got my first IBM PC in 1991/2 , then our PC, in about three months, after I tried to watch too much porn and installed too many software, got infected with various malware...We called the local technician (I still remember the sir, he is a very kind and intelligent person. I miss him, he's still in India.) and he told us that we've got a "virus" (Note : He didn't use the term 'malware') on our PC. He installed F-port on our PC, and got it running like new again. So I installed the aforementioned Giant AntiSpyware, SUPERANTISPYWARE and other TONS of anti-malware.

All I could say is that he had to re-install Windows/whatever-we-were-using-at-that-time every time he visited our little home.
(He sometimes hit me on stomach for my folly.)

That made me laugh a bit ahaha

 

[Cats-4_Owners-2]

In a cold winter night, I got my first IBM PC in 1991/2 , then our PC, in about three months, after I tried to watch too much porn and installed too many software, got infected with various malware...We called the local technician (I still remember the sir, he is a very kind and intelligent person. I miss him, he's still in India.) ...

...All I could say is that he had to re-install Windows/whatever-we-were-using-at-that-time every time he visited our little home.
(He sometimes hit me on stomach for my folly.)

What an endearing recollection!
I especially smiled where, at the end, he'd communicated knowing (by hitting the stomach of..) whose mess he had to clean up!

 

[Ashu Kumar]

I tried

...

That's a real heart-to-heart confession and whatever you tried, keep trying but hey keep on trying other things as well. Be experimental .

and I will try to follow it myself what i just said here .