My Three Weeks of Hell from Panda

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bulgin

Member
2006-05-13 10:27 pm
www.blueangelaudio.com
  • #1
    Happy New Year Guys:D

    Until 12/06, I used Snorton Semantics antivirus software. After considerable nagging to renew towards the end of the last subscription (and because it slowed things down), I discussed the problem with my regular computer store, who recommended Panda antivirus. All year, throughout 2007, I had no issues with the stuff - until 3 weeks ago when they began literally spamming me to renew. The current subscription ends on the 10th January 2008 and eventually, I sent polite mail to their local distributor, explaining that I will renew, that I will not buy online and that I will load Panda 2008 at a time to suit me.

    Their answer? They turned up the wick and INCREASED spamming me with renewal notices - almost every few minutes, displaying the most dire warnings on my screen about the consequences of non-renewal.

    What's worse, if you manage to 'unsubscribe' to one warning, another pops up.

    I have since bought a new Panda subscription for 2008 but have not loaded it. In fact, I'm planning to exchange it for Kasperski od something similar.

    Have you had similar experiences?

    bulgin
     
    SY

    SY

    diyAudio Moderator Emeritus
    2002-10-24 10:19 pm
    Chicagoland
    www.SYclotron.com
  • #3
    Ditto. Panda was a nightmare for me. Antivir works great.

    A hint my built-in expert told me: Once a week, uninstall Antivir and install a different package (like AVG). Run that to catch anything that Antivir might have missed, then uninstall it and reinstall Antivir. It's a pain to have to go through that, but anti-virus programs don't seem to play wel together.
     
    I_Forgot

    I_Forgot

    Member
    2005-01-20 2:29 am
    Phoenix, Az.
  • #14
    Cobra2 said:
    Aha! Then Windows & Norton are :D
    Click to expand...

    Windows is a trojan, and a worm, but not a virus. In fact, it tries to avoid replication- completely unlike a virus.

    When I think of all the time I've wasted trying to keep windows machines running... I just start to boil!

    Windows XP "Professional" is called "professional" because it takes one to keep it working. My laptop randomly requires rebooting 3 to 8 times in order to get the pointer and keyboard to keep working after I log in. What sort of POS OS can't even manage to sort out the keyboard and pointer driver when booting up? When I tell it to shut down it sits there with a black screen and pointer for 2-3 minutes before finally shutting down.

    Win XP keeps updating itself and asking me to reboot. It keeps trying to load the same update over and over again.

    Win 2K was the last, almost acceptable OS that M$ has produced. I say almost acceptable because it crashes a little less often than any other M$ OS I have used. I made the mistake of turning on auto-updates and it updated itself right into oblivion. I did a reinstall and left the auto-update feature off and it has been working fine ever since.

    I've been dual booting with Ubuntu Linux on one machine for about 1 1/2 years and on my laptop for a few months and everything works great as long as I stay in linux. Unfortunately there are a couple apps I don't have equivalents for in Linux (or they won't run under wine) or I would wipe M$ garbage off my machines forever.

    M$-- pffft!

    I_F
     
    wrenchone

    wrenchone

    Member
    2004-02-06 7:22 am
    Silicon Valley
  • #16
    Just downloaded Avast! - I'll give it a try. I've been running AVG for awhile with nio problems and using Zone Alarm for firewall and anti-spyware. We'll se if Avast! catches anything new. BTW, one of my colleagues bought his girlfriend a new laptop, and one of the first things he did was to flush the toilet on Vista.... I have no intention of letting it anywhere near any of my machines.
     
    theAnonymous1

    theAnonymous1

    Member
    2004-02-19 5:53 pm
    Anonymityville
  • #17
    I've tried Ubuntu/Kubuntu just to see what all the hype is about. I can't say I was too impressed. There are just as many, if not more driver issues than I have ever had with XP. It took over 3 hours of research and a whole lot of terminal/konsole work just to get my wireless running. Installing/uninstalling software can be quite a headache as well. I think Windows is far more user friendly in this respect.

    Can't wait for SP3.;)

    I also cleared Vista from a laptop my girlfriend bought not too long ago. XP will be supported by Microsoft until 2014, so I'm in no rush to switch.
     
    neutron7

    neutron7

    Member
    2003-12-25 5:58 am
    Toronto Canada
    www.diyti.com
  • #18
    often i get people come to me with crapped out PCs because norton expired, installed norton etc. it is a bloated POS!

    not to mention the extra "email protection" drivers and other crap they put in to make it look like you got your moneys worth.

    they might be working with Microsoft to slow your computer down with each new release so new one becomes more desirable (like windows vista) or maybe they are just incompetent.


    Avira PE classic is free and works well. there is a nag pop up when it updates, that is all.
    does not slow your machine nearly as much. apparently AVG free is good as well

    for spyware, spybot searc & destroy is nice (also free)

    another thing to do, if you use firefox is get ad block plus, using firefox in itself will slow down the barrage of crap that IE users get.

    and change your hosts file (if you have a local network, not for domains) http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm
    what it does is redirect ip requests for crappy sites to your own machine.

    once you do these things even a system connected without a hardware router/firewall are fairly safe, however if you are connected directly then you might want a software firewall better then the windows one. normally with a router/firewall even a cheapo NAT one such as cisco/linksys WRT54 i turn windows firewall off. its just another service to slow you down(if you dont need it).
     
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