Still no infection

[MikeLierman]

I run no realtime AV on the our work horse machine as we use that for research, updating tools, etc. I did have AV installed and I always had to turn it off because it would flag our tools as hack tools. I do have antivirus running on my machine in the front, and I change out the av with whatever we install the most of, for testing. Want to make sure I'm not installing a product that my customers will be annoyed with.

 

[PcTek9]

and sometimes...

Sometimes there are devised applications which specifically target an antivirus, so as peculiar as it may sound... There's a few out there which specifically go after specific antiviruses and disable them.

I think it's great that you are lucky. A friend of mine recently paid for an application and it had a virus in it. So....

A computer repair facility is a hotbed for virus/trojan/worm/malware activity. You are extremely lucky.

I remember once I went to a major search engine website and every time my antivirus would go off, b/c one of their advertisers was using the internationally posted ad to deliver a trojan.

I tried to tell them, I told people, and the search engine. I even tried it from different systems to verify it wasn't something on that isolated system, always with the same results.

 

[GCS]

Avast and MBAM has been my winning combo for some time now

 

[gunslinger]

I think it's great that you are lucky. A friend of mine recently paid for an application and it had a virus in it. So....
A computer repair facility is a hotbed for virus/trojan/worm/malware activity. You are extremely lucky.

I don't think its luck at all. There are simply too many techs on here who don't run AV to chalk it up to pure luck.

 

[Highlander]

I don't think its luck at all. There are simply too many techs on here who don't run AV to chalk it up to pure luck.

Do you always run in a sandbox?

 

[gunslinger]

Do you always run in a sandbox?

No. I simply set up my system, make an image, and test new software inside a VM. Nothing fancy.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

No. I simply set up my system, make an image, and test new software inside a VM. Nothing fancy.

A lot of viruses are VM aware. What happens when you run a file in a VM may be completely different than what happens when you run it on your real system.

 

[gunslinger]

A lot of viruses are VM aware. What happens when you run a file in a VM may be completely different than what happens when you run it on your real system.

Maybe, but I'm coming up on 8 years infection free with no AV. There are plenty of other techs on here who have been running AV free longer than that. It's not the necessity that some people make it out to be. For the end-user, yes definitely. I still say if you are a tech who "needs" an AV something is wrong.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

Maybe, but I'm coming up on 8 years infection free with no AV. There are plenty of other techs on here who have been running AV free longer than that. It's not the necessity that some people make it out to be. For the end-user, yes definitely. I still say if you are a tech who "needs" an AV something is wrong.

I need an AV, to compromise my system has the potential to impact a very large number of people. Running without one is a pointless risk.

I was just making sure you understood that some viruses know when they are in a virtual environment.

 

[gunslinger]

I think my clients will be fine. I have never infected a customers machine because mine was infected. Not saying it won't happen at some point, I'm just saying that it's as likely to happen with an AV as without.

 

[Boston Pro Comp Serv LLC]

Need an AV no, have one yes. Even on the bench machines. Just add the AV tools that the software continues to flag as exceptions or exclude their folders and files from the scans. I can see how the real time scanning could be frustrating, esp when you plug in a drive to clone and the AV keeps popping that it's found infections on that drive, or like MSE starts removing them without intervention. In those cases you'd have to disable real time.