Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
Everyone should have trustworthy anti-virus protection installed on their PCs. CA Anti-Virus is one solution that's been solid and reliable.
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I no longer recommend CA Anti-Virus. Please see What Security Software do you recommend? for my current recommendations. |
One of my most common requests is what anti-virus software people should be using.
There are many good packages out there, but I've used CA Anti-Virus for many, many years. It's been rock solid, quietly updating its virus definitions and scanning my computers for threats every night since before I left Microsoft.
Yes, before I left Microsoft.
And that's one of the reasons I began recommending it: then called "eTrust", it was the corporate anti-virus solution within Microsoft for a few years prior to my departure. In fact, as part of Microsoft's security strategy, we were encouraged to take it home and use it on our computers there as well.
Which I did.
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My logic then was simple: if it's good enough for Microsoft to recommend and license for me to take home, who am I to argue?
That was several years ago, and I continue to run eTrust and its successor CA Anti-Virus on several of my machines today.
CA Anti-Virus is a solid, reliable product that does what it does well, and with minimal interaction. Quite literally, I set it up once when building out a machine and then proceed to forget all about it, knowing that it's doing its thing.
The current version of CA Anti-Virus supports up to 3 PCs right out of the box, perfect for most home use. Daily updates, email scanning (which I actually don't use), real time and scheduled scanning (which I do use) and more make this an easy to recommend package.
One caveat: I generally do not recommend all-in-one packages. If you try CA Anti-Virus make sure that you're getting the anti-virus program, and not the larger security package also offered by CA.
Let CA Anti-Virus do one thing, and one thing well.
I recommend it.
Article C3538 - October 20, 2008 « »
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
October 23, 2008 11:16 AM
have installed the trial version of CA AV but seems that my pc is now slow down a little bit and not feeling good with it, don't know why! and checked with some virus files which was detected by kaspersky, bitdefender, avira... but CA does not notice anything.. hmmm what to do now?
rgds/hassan
April 25, 2009 2:28 PM
every since i installed the CA antivirus free trial my computer is so slow what should i do
April 27, 2009 4:01 AM
I personally use Avast, There are plenty of good free anti-virus software that offer the same kind of protection as the boxed software you can buy at the store. Have a look at it Best Free Antivirus Software
May 10, 2009 9:58 PM
I have been useing and recommending CA for years until now (April 2009)CA seems to be losing it's touch, In the last 2 months I have had several systems with CA Antivirus get viruses. I am switching all my customers to Norton 2009, It detected the viruses CA missed and finds them as soon as you open the folder not just when you access the file!!!
May 12, 2009 9:48 AM
I have CA eTrust Antivirus. It just works... that is, I don't notice it slowing the PC down ala McAfee. However, the other day I noticed that it hasn't updated since the middle of March. But it acts like it is updating. What the heck? Did a MS update break something? Or did I break something? I have tried changing the FTP folder, same results or it says it is missing "Siglist.txt".
I have 3 XP and 1 Win98 boxes. CA is on 2 XP and Win98. The 3rd machine is running naked. Everything is behind the router. I have not touched the other XP box beyond checking the dates of updates.
I would like to fix this. If it's time to buy a new copy of the software, I'm OK with that. But I don't know.... I'm not finding anything on the CA site and Google, well, it's Google and links to forums of folks complaining are not very useful.
paul