Hi all,

I am absolutely new to this forum. I have Windows XP (pirated probably) with SP2 with 512MB RAM. I am presently using the AVG trial edition antivirus cum antispyware software to protect my PC. I came to know about clamwin through my friend GOOGLE and even this forum too. i have not yet downloaded the clamwin yet and before doing that i would like to know about the effectiveness of clamwin in detecting and cleaning the virus or trojan or spyware etc.

Another question is Why not the clamwin is charging to use its software as Norton, Mcafee, AVG are used to. is there by any means the quality of the clamwin is not upto the mark as of other antivirus s/w (norton etc). Guys, dont mistake me as one of my friend told that since virus blocking programs involves costliest resources and thats why other companies are charging to their product. is it true?? shall i use clamwin to my PC to protect against spyware etc?? any reply to this query by experienced users is really appreciable.

Thanks in advance.

I have been using ClamWin since 2006 and am certainly not an expert, but I'll take a stab at answering you.

A free AV like ClamWin cannot be as "good" as a commercial AV product. They just don't have the financial and personnel resources to commit to full-time development and improvement like the commercial AVs. ClamWin is/was developed during the free time available to the developers, and their priority is earning a living elsewhere. It has/had the advantage of being able to use the ClamAV engine and signature database developed for Linux email servers. In addition to being free, the free AVs do have some advantages, however. They are usually more responsive to their users, and they are not resource hogs like most of the bloated commercial AVs.

With all that said, however, you should not be using ClamWin by itself if you are on the Web a lot. You should have a primary antivirus like AVG or Avast or AntiVir (all three of these have "stripped down" free versions by the way) that scans your computer in "real time" (on access) as files are opened or closed on your computer. ClamWin only scans files "on demand" as you tell it to, although you can configure it to perform regular automated scans. So you should only use ClamWin as a "backup" scanner until the developers come up with a real-time/on access version. You also shouldn't use more than one real time scanner--that's why ClamWin is a good backup. Several people in the ClamWin forum use the free Threatfire behavior blocker from PC-Tools and say it works very well with ClamWin.

Even the commercial AVs don't do as good a job against spyware as the dedicated antispyware programs do, and they can find some trojans the AVs can't. Microsoft's Windows Defender is free, it scans for spyware in real time, it's pretty good, and it doesn't conflict with other security software. There are also a few other free antispyware programs but they don't usually scan real time--such as Lavasoft's free version or Malwarebytes' Antimalware program.

I hope this information is helpful.

Regards,

Hi Bob,

Thanks for your reply. From your words, what i understand is i need to have some other antivirus software and clamwin should be used as a backup one. I have a doubt regarding this is that Do a computer supports 2 antivirus software in it??

Hello,

As Bob suggested you should use Clamwin as a backup virus scanner. Since it still has no real time feature available it will not conflict with a resident (=with real time protection) AV. I am using Clamwin since version 0.90 and has never given me problems when installed beside resident AV tools like AVG or Avira Antivir.
Currently I am using it together with Threatfire both on my XP and Vista machines; no troubles at all so far ( of course it is intended that 2 AV's cannot be launched for scans at the same time).
Let's say the advantage of having 2 Av's (one resident and one on demand) is that you may always get a double check on the files installed on your machine and make separate scans at diffferent times (Clamwin preferences can be easily set to run schedules scans of complete HD or single folders).


If you wish to install an antispyware tool beside a 'simple' AV, you may think to try Spyware Terminator (www.spywareterminator.com) which does a good job and comes with real time protection. Another option could be Spybot S&D. Both of them are free to use.
If your computer is not running behind a router I would suggest to install also a firewall for a further layer of protection. Many good options (Commodo, PC Tools) are available for free.

Hope this helps,
Antonio