ClamWin Free Antivirus :: View topic

Posted: Wed Jul 22, 2020 1:26 am

1. Everytime the data base loads I get a message that is is out of date. I have noticed, however, that Clamwin seems to recognize more and more types of viruses and removes them. Just today, it went up from just over 807,000 recognized viruses to over 810,000. I'm not exactly sure what this means. I'm trying to keep track of the end raw numbers.

2. Many people say that AVG or Avast are good. I've used both and they are not what they claim. First of all, they have a number of sneaky add-ons that invade the system and are very hard to remove. They both very slowly and are memory and resource hogs. By the way, they have no real time scanner. They are always trying you to upgrade and spend more money. It might be good, at least for now, to use Clam Sentinel as a real-time scanner. It's a little tricky to set up properly and has to be monitored but at least it doesn't use as much resources. Secondly, I found that Avast acts like a virus and literally takes data from the computer and uses it. This is very unnerving because that they are suppose to be protecting our data not taking it away and no doubt selling it for profit. They too have annoying pop ups trying to get you to upgrade and spend more money.

3. Clamwin takes more than 6 hours to scan my computer. C:\ and F:\ are only 500 GB each! This can be slightly annoying since when I'm working on the internet or running certain programs, they will stop or glitch. Same with Clam Sentinel. When Clamwin has finished, I scan the c:\ again with Malwarebytes Free stand alone Bata Root Scanner. It's data base is always up-dated every time you use it. It doesn't take all that long to scan my C:\.

4. I have put together a "Tool Box" that includes many utensils. Some of these are already built in Windows Directory. I created a batch file and a batch directory and try to run these as part of my daily and weekly maintenance routine. It's a lot of work, but it's better than changing to Win. 10. That can be very expensive and I don't have that kind f money.

Conclusion:
I keep looking for a reasonably priced virus scanner. So far, none of the others that I tried have been any better. Some don't even work at all. I think they're just "Dummy Programs" designed to deceive people. There's a lot of that going on in the world today. Hope you are not being deceived. (B.B.L.)

Posted: Wed Jul 22, 2020 3:22 pm

I can tell that you are the kind of user that ClamWin was originally intended for.

The database from Clam AV may have been improved--it certainly needs it. Since inception, Clam AV and its database has been intended for Linux email servers. Clam AV only had to worry about detecting viruses in file attachments to email. There was no need for real-time scanning and detection of only the types of viruses that would be in the attachment.

ClamWin database loading and engine scan times are too slow. After using ClamWin since 2006, I quit using it early this year. I now rely upon Microsoft Windows Defender (formerly known as Security Essentials. I also do daily scans with Kaspersky TDSSKiller and Eset Online Scanner. Both of these are free, on-demand scanners, don't need to be installed, and are very good. As far as I can tell (after using them a couple of years), they do not do anything but scan.

If you are looking for a good, free, non-intrusive AV, look into Fortinet's Forticlient. It is fairly simple but installation is a bit tricky but well worth it. I don't know what computer you are using, but I think it should run on anything as far back as Win XP. For something older, look into some of the security utilities available at NoVirusThanks (Italy). They have some OS hardening software that is pretty good.

Thanks for using ClamWin, but I think it is time to move on. Clam Sentinel is also out-of-date and shouldn't be used either.
In case you think I'm some wild-eyed troll, I am the Robert Scroggins Andrea Russo thanked for help with Clam Sentinel heuristics in the Clam Sentinel credits, and I worked as a sigmaker at Clam AV on behalf of ClamWin and the Open Source community from 2009-2014.

Regards,