MAMEWorld Forums - The Loony Bin - Re: What the crap AVG....

> Again I must tell you that it's how you perceive things. In the DOS days, when
> viruses were rampant and antivirus software was from scarce to unheard, it was just a
> commandline scanner. The scanner (real-time, on-demand, on-purpose, at-your-back,
> when-you want) and a solid virus DB is the main part of an antivirus. How the scanner
> is activated is, and should be, left to the user (at least to users who know what
> they do). Without a good scanner, the real-time checker of a file is pretty much
> useless.
>
> For me, the real-time module which calls the scanner when you
> touch/download/uncompress/think-of a file is a recent shiny thing which should be
> used with care if you don't want to waste resources when you don't want to. And yes,
> there were resident scanners in DOS to check executables when you ran them. I don't
> know of anyone who used them, but of course that was just a situational thingy.
> Nowadays there are so many processes running in the background that users hardly know
> what's going on besides the browser window.
>
> So, if you're a simple, novice or careless user, an install-and-forget antivirus is
> the ideal solution, and I can agree on that. For a medium to power user, it's just a
> choice. Hence the start of this thread. Because Italie has bad grammer but excellence
> in computing. Like 2+2=5 for large values of 2 and such other computing and IT
> mysteries.
>
> Does anyone else remember when McAffee was the king on the DOS days? ^_^

And i agree with what you just said, but if you're really an advanced user you don't need an installable antivirus then. Antivirus today are made to scan files in real time by making use of Windows multitasking. The main purpose of any installable antivirus is to run in the background and check your files unless otherwise advertised (command line, on-line scanner). Basically you're saying me you brought a car with the purpose to travel long distances but you prefer to push it yourself to save fuel. You could mod it yourself so it doesn't waste enough resources if you have the tools and knowledge, that's what experimented technicians do. But for the rest the car works as intended because it was designed to behave like that when brought. Also, of course it's hard to disable a real time scanner, it was made that way. If you were able to disable it so easily, then any trojan will too.

But enough of that topic, you already brought memories about when i was sixteen and had to fight against Natas. Those were the days i had to buy a book about viruses and learn more about the topic. It came with an outdated McAfee antivirus diskette, but knowledge was enough for me to start. Those little bastards earned some respect, when "stealth" and "polymorphic" really mean something. Today viruses are just a bunch of worms they won't do anything unless the user itself run them.

For the nostalgic and if you're lucky to find it, there was a Russian antivirus called AVP by Kami Corp. which had a demo mode. In that demo mode you can see how some of the most famous graphic viruses worked in an infected machine without any harm. That way you see again how viruses like Ambulance, Cascade, Pong, Casino, Den Zuk and many others ran in an infected machine. File name was "AVP_200.ZIP", i think demo mode was removed in the v3.00 version.