"Muse Gruppes" <moosegroops@nyc.rr.com> wrote in
news:458b3a97$0$29319$4c368faf@roadrunner.com:
I'd be interested to know specifically what it claims to have caught and what
you had on board that purportedly missed what it claims to have caught.
I used it for years, starting with a Windows ME system. I got it through a
ZoneAlarm promotion for a very low price, I'm thinking $9.99 but I could be
off by ~$10 one way or the other.
Anyway, the point is, it came to pass that I upgraded all my machines to
WinXPpro, and put PP aboard on each of them. On it's routine scans
PestPatrol absolutely trashed my Windows XP system twice in about a 3 month
period. Errrgggghhhh!
It turned out that it incorrectly identified some system files as potential
malware, and "moved them to the vault" but couldn't restore them, and deleted
"detected" registry keys, etc. What a mess. The first time it happened I
did this extensive series of e-Mails with the software's author. He was
"really sorry" and others had the issues as well. There was this thing where
he wanted me (and others who had the same problems) to be a "beta-tester" in
return for a free copy of his software. I'm like "I've got nearly 300 hours
tied up in this mess, for what? $30 +/- ?"
I'm really lucky in that I've used a backup image strategy for many years, so
I can restore to a previous working config within about 7 minutes or so, only
losing those data and modifications which occured in the last few days or so,
re-do to catch-up, and off I go again.
Anyway, the second time it happened, I ripped it off all my machines.
Some of the blame could arguably be deflected to how I set the scan and clean
options - I'd be hard-pressed to counter plausible-scenarios with actual data
from that far back.
I think the real problem(s) with it was basically that it's one of those
softwares which is trying too hard to cover too broad a range of malwares
with too few actual people doing it. It really had a lot of falsing that I
recognized right off. Case in point, was it had this recurring theme with a
couple of the files in "Pop-up Killer" one of my favorite freebies of the
era... And, naturally, all the other scans had "missed" these sleeper-cell
nasties.
Now I'm prefering an AV to deal with virus, TrojanRemover to deal with
Trojans and Worms, Antispyware (Windows Defender and Ad-aware) to deal with
spyware and Adware, etc. It seems to me that software that deals with a
specific issue works-out better than those software which try to everything,
and usually end-up doing it hap-hazardly and superficially.
Best wishes to all for a safe and joyous holiday season.
--
I think a good movie would be about this guy
who is a brain scientist, but he gets hit on the head
and it damages exactly that part of the brain
that makes you want to study the brain.
So, everyday he wakes up to try to figure out
what his life was all about before getting hit on the head.
It could be a romantic comedy because when he wakes up
with an ugly girl, he'd think he's being Punk'd by Ashton Kutcher.
