Best antivirus on guest Windows XP?

D

DianaB

Bit poster
What do you like to run on your Parallels Windows XP SP3 (with bootcamp partition?)

I've been using Nod32 on my Windows PCs, and it worked OK when booting the partition, but now, using Parallels 5.0, it's horrible. Takes at least 5 minutes for the VM to release resources when booting the VM.

I've tried various settings, but my guess is that Nod32 is hogging resources during its start-up scan and update.

What alternative low-resource-usage antivirus do you like?

I'm using a PowerMac with 4.0 Gb of Ram, so memory shouldn't be the problem. It think it's possible that Nod32 is looking at the entire disk instead of just the windows partition + VM, and I don't see a way to control that.

--diana
 
I sadly bid farewell to Nod32 and am trying Microsoft Security Essentials. So far, the VM boots much more quickly, but still resources are hogged (the user interface doesn't respond) while the startup scan is going. MSE isn't as configurable as Nod32. I wonder if Kaspersky would be better?
 
Hi Diana,

I use Eset Smart Security without any problem on my VM (not Boot Camp).

At startup, NOD32 checks for signatures update and scans startup files: so it increases a bit boot time.
NOD32 will never scan the entire disk via real time protection modules. It will do it only thru on-demand scanning if set that way.
Check you are using last version of Eset NOD32 Antivirus (v4.2.40.0).

I don't think Kaspersky is THE solution to your problem.
You said your MAC has 4 GB of RAM but how much RAM did you allow to your VM? This is the first thing to check IMHO.

Regards,
 
Shepherd, thanks very much for the reply. I was using the most recent Nod32 antivirus engine. Maybe the problem is in using a bootcamp partition as the VM, but I don't understand why that would make such a difference. I am allocating a fixed 2 GB to the VM. If you or anyone else has more ideas on how best to configure Nod32 for this environment, or changes in VM settings I should try, I'd like to hear it.
My results with Microsoft Security Essentials were no better than Nod32.
When I completely uninstall virus checking, the VM boots up very quickly. I do expect some delay, but there's an enormous slowdown when running antivirus. It's really unacceptable.
So, I'm back where I started: can someone recommend a virus checker that works well with Parallels VM with bootcamp partition?

---Diana
 
I installed Kaspersky home trial version, and now my XP bootcamp VM boots up nicely! Yay!

So: to anyone else having this problem: it appears to me that Kaspersky works much better than Nod32 or MSE in the Parallels environment when using a Bootcamp VM.
 
DianaB said:
I installed Kaspersky home trial version, and now my XP bootcamp VM boots up nicely! Yay!

So: to anyone else having this problem: it appears to me that Kaspersky works much better than Nod32 or MSE in the Parallels environment when using a Bootcamp VM.
Click to expand...

Hi Diana,

I'm glad Kaspersky solved your problem but it's pretty amazing. I know well both products and Eset one never slowed down any of my computers (even PD5 VM), except a bit till end of startup files scanning. I cannot say the same thing from Kaspersky even if last version is much "lighter" than oldest ones. On my PD5 VM KIS triggered more network problems.

Both Nod32 and KAV are very good anti-malware anyway.
Kaspersky Internet Security personal firewall is IMHO better than the one from Eset Smart Security. KIS has few very interesting features, among which possibility to sandbox some applications and the virtual keyboard.

Enjoy now :-).
 
sigh. Well it seems that immediately after installing Kaspersky it booted up nicely, but now I have the same stalled behaviors, and slowdown on the Mac side, too. 2Gb allocated to the VM, it's a bootcamp-based VM.

Anyone have any more ideas on how to correctly configure an antivirus application for a Windows XP Pro SP3 bootcamp VM in Parallels 5.0?

Suggestions for other forums that might offer more guidance?
 
Solved finally. I thought about what could be causing a conflict. It was also affecting my Mac OS when the Windows system was booting. I realized I do have something unusual going on: I am running a backup server called Mirra. I looked at its activity files and saw that I am backing up some bootcamp partition folders, from my Mac side. When I removed that backup, the log-jam at startup went away.

So it now looks like the problem wasn't the specific antivirus at all, but the conflict between the backup and antivirus locking files.

Thank you for the help, perhaps this will help someone else sometime! (I assume this kind of problem no longer affects Time Machine in the latest Parallels release, taking note of the sticky topic at the top of this message board.)
 
Hi Diana,

I really didn't undertand your problem with NOD32 even if with security products everything may happen :-).
Usually you don't have to set antivirus in specific way because it's running under VM.
However I advise you to review default settings.
If you decide to come back to NOD32, choose Advanced mode instead of Standard one.

Regards,
 
AVG Antivirus - it uses less VM resources, has good reviews and best of all, it's FREE!!!!
Bud James
 
Just to finalize this thread: the slowness of my VM, while much improved when virus scan disabled, was not caused by the virus scan, but rather, by Parallels configuration requirements. Seems that Parallels 5.0.9344 doesn't really play nice in the Mac OS 10.6.4 environment, and needs to have memory restricted. See config settings here. Perhaps a forthcoming update will address this problem.
 
My recommendation is to use an antivirus only solution, this means do not use the so called 'internet security bla bla', or 360 something, that include a firewall and all sort of additions, that, if you want to keep the resource usage down, Windows already includes a firewall, and if you are using a shared network on the VM, Windows is already being NAT firewalled. As for privacy protection tools, most browsers already have those tools.

In that spirit my recommendation is Microsoft Security Essential, which in my notion of an AV is what an AV needs to be, it doesn't get in the way, what it's suppose to do, and doesn't require tinkering, and is free.
 
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