for those of you who have been waiting for a antivirus that works and scans all folders and directories in 64bit windows, its availabe as a trial at eset(nod32). 30 day free trial, dont know exactly when it will be released but, i imagine its not far away

This is a beta, so dont go installing it on anything crucial.

nod32 64bit download 30day trial

just fixed that dead link, it should work now.

nead i note its not just one of the first for XP64 - yet also is one of the best scanning engines out there.

but its not really a 64bit antivirus, its just compatible with x64 (fully compatible that is), but still, its a 32bit app, it installs under program files (x86), and consumes a lot of memory.

SAV10, Avast, and eTrust are all good 64bit native A/V applications. NOD32 is still a 32bit app that can run on the 64bit platform - it's not bad, but it's definitely not the best way to do it.

What do you mean waiting for? Avast has been doing it from the beginning.
www.avast.com
Works perfect and the home edition is completely free too.

yes avast has been around for longer, but it doesn't have the track record of nod32 in respect of detection of most recent threats and very low false alarms, also i have 2gig of ram, so i'm not concerned about mem hungry applications, i use sandra to benchmark my system before and after installing new programs to see if any performance has been lost or gained. see for ur self, install 30day free trial and compare to avast, i bet nod32 finds threats that avast cant.

Oh really??? It consumes alots of memory?? I guess you have not used it before.

I don't like to do this, but I'll bust out my "credibility" stick - I work for MS Support at the highest levels in Core OS platform support, and I can tell you that NOD32 uses almost as much memory as the absolute worst, McAfee 8 (although SAV 9.x and older are right behind - SAV10 with the latest update runs entirely in paged pool, which is much better). NOD32 installations can have serious issues in nonpaged pool usage on "power-user" and server-class systems, that to my knowledge have not been fixed for quite some time.

It should be OK on a 64bit system (where nonpaged pool is now 128GB rather than 256MB or 128MB), but it's still not a very well-written product, memory-wise.

And yes, it does install to "program files (x86)" by default, meaning it's still a 32bit application.

I hate to say it as I'm new here but that is a load of BS. I've been running NOD32 for a while now on my 64 bit installation with no slowdown whatsoever. In fact, I wouldn't even know it's running minus the icon in my system tray. If any of you check out planetamd64 I'm sure you'll find similar opinions.

That's like saying, "I don't know what the problem is - works on my box". 99% of A/V installations work fine, but for the 1% that do not, the big three are the worst - NOD32, McAfee, and Symantec. Just because you have no problems doesn't mean others won't.

I'm not saying NOD32 will work with all installations flawlessly but your original post is implying to me that NOD32 is bloated (a system resource hog) along the lines of the Norton suite and McAfee. If that's what you mean I beg to differ because I have tried all those products and it's certainly the lightest.

No, I'm not implying it's bloatware, but it is a resource hog - not in the sense that you may be thinking, but in kernel resource usage (a finite, non-upgradeable resource, unlike physical RAM).

I agree with j0j0. I have experienced slow downs when using Panda AV or Norton but never with NOD32. Honestly if it takes up a lot of kernel resources that is fine by me as long as I dont experience any slowdowns unlike the other AVs. cluberti you could be right but I find it really hard to believe considering NOD32 is so light and it doesnt lag anything down.

What you believe doesn't change the truth . Seriously, use whatever works for you, especially with antivirus. Just be aware that NOD32 does have some kernel and handle resource issues, although these should be somewhat mitigated in x64.

Actually recently avast has been very good. I am convinced by what you say that you have not even given the new avast a try at all, so your comments are pretty much moot. If you check Virus Bulletin avast got the 100% award many times over the past few months, they failed a lot in the past yes but they have made huge improvements and now they detect threats as good as any other including nod.

And avast is definitely not a memory hog, I don't know if it uses less than nod or not but it seems slim and fast to me. And I have gotten zero false alarms.

And about installing nod32 and seeing if it finds threats, well I've already tried nod32 several times along with others. But they never find threats anyways since I don't go downloading weird stuff or getting viruses.

Yeah I haven't seen a virus in a couple years at least. If you know what your doing on the Internet, it's 90% of the battle.

That's the hardest part about making the internet secure - most people think security is something you can buy, rather than something you practice. The A/V and antispyware vendors make a killing because the earth contains a vastly uneducated user base, security-wise.

And since most people now consider a PC an appliance, rather than a tool, this isn't going to ever improve - it's become to be thought of in the same vein as a refrigerator or stove for most people.

Can you backup your claims? Because without proof, your "credibility stick" is about as strong as a wet noodle. I've installed NOD32 across multiple systems (trial version as I work for a system builder), and have used it personally on both my home and work machine through 32-bit and 64-bit installs (and I do consider myself a "power-user" as you put it), and we also use it on almost all our machines at work. You so-called serious issues have never arisen for me on any of the aforementioned machines. Do you have any evidence to display or are you just trying to blow smoke up our USB ports?

All I can say is that I work for Microsoft, in Core OS support, and have for many years. Past that, I can't put case information on the 'net - suffice to say, almost ALL A/V products all have issues (although I'd say McAfee was the worst) with using more than their fair share of kernel memory resources, and NOD32 is no different. And rarely do I blow anything up anyone's USB ports, short of compressed air when cleaning the innards of a PC.

It's great that you have had no problems, but you not having problems doesn't mean others do not or will not. Again, 64bit Windows alleviates some of the kernel memory resource issues, but not all.

Nice. I like how you side-step the issue. Of course no software is perfect and that some people are inevitably going to have issues. But I was asking you to point to articles or some sort of evidence that shows what you were stating above to be your "credibility stick". Has no one done any articles testing this problem to prove your point? I'm just asking for some white papers or at least some tests done by a reliable source. Do you have any links at all?

I don't have anything public on Microsoft's site that I can point you to, as I only have internal PSS support incident cases that contain this data. No antivirus vendor is going to publish issues like this on it's website, either.

You can call me out all you'd like, but I'm not sidestepping the issue. I'd like to produce data to back up my position, but I'd likely be let go for doing so, and I'd rather not. You can believe me, you can not believe me - it really doesn't matter to me, and changes my opinion of NOD32 not a bit. I believe it to be a program that uses far too much kernel memory resources, and I've seen data with my own eyes attesting to the problems it can cause (and it's not alone - most A/V packages use far too much kernel resources when in use). Again, believe me or don't believe me, it's your choice. Use NOD32 if you like it as well, I'm not here to advocate one product over another - they're all equally bad.

Well, I just find it a little hard to believe that no one else has reported on this considering how long you say it's been a "problem". You would think by now that *someone* would have done a study on it. But since you refuse to provide any support for your claims, I guess we'll just leave it at that and go our merry ways.

Fine by me. I still stand by my claims, but I feel you probably do too - I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this.

Edit: slightly OT - did you know there's a KB article that goes along with the link in your sig?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375

@Jito
Please check out cluberti's post in detail. He is NOT saying that NOD32 is a memory hog on the whole. He is talking about KERNEL RESOURCE usage....
Thats a serious issue indeed, and if you remember, thats what brought down the stability of the win9x-series (they had very limited kernel resources & all apps ate it up constantly). I dont remember where I read it, but I'm convinced of what cluberti said above.

I read his post, and understand perfectly what he's saying. And I'm not saying he's wrong either, as I have no proof either way. What I was asking for was some evidence that proves his point, which he not only failed to provide but adamently refused to. I tend to question anyone that won't back up their claims.

This is news to me. I've tried out a lot of AV apps and Nod32 has always been the fastest and lightest. Hmm, looks like I'll have to do some testing.

BTW, before M$ got into AV apps, didn't you guys use Nod32?

Edit: Mr. Cluberti may be right. All you have to do is go into Task Manager without Nod32 running and with Nod32 running and you'll see that a lot of kernel resources are being used by Nod32.

Well, he is probably bound by contract to not reveal internal findings.
But I do know that I've seen NOD32 unstable sometimes. Also, its quite a decent AV, but I hope they clean up the interface/settingsUI though - its messy currently.

@saugatak:
Ah, thanks for checking it out!
I did not have NOD32 installed, and cluberti seems to have FORGOT that he could simply post a taskmanager scrshot of nod32 & SAV10, for proof.

I could've done that, but I don't have a box with NOD32 running on it at the moment. I actually thought of that this morning on my way into work, but it's been busy. And yes, I've got contractual obligations that... prevent me from posting internal Microsoft documents. It's OK though, I don't take it personally, and I always believe everyone has a right to their opinions, whether I agree with them or not (and vice-versa). Thanks for the vote of confidence, though, I do appreciate it .

I love Fridays.

What cluberti says is news to me as well. I have tried many AV software and NOD32 seems by far the least resource hog to me. Norton, McAfee, Panda, and others all seem to hog a lot of system resources.

NOD32 seemed by far the best and didn't seem to slow my system down at all. All other AV products I hve used seemed to slow my system down a lot rehardless of how fast and how fast a CPU I had and how much memory I put in my system.

NOD32 also detects vrisues on the fly extremely well. It has cuaght eveyr piece of malware that tried to hit me when browsing the web.

You say that all AV software has serious problems. Well, you miswell use NOD32 because it seems to have the least problems and takes up the least system resources and doesn't slow your PC like most other AV applications.


And can I ask you this. Why is it that NOD32 has a separate version for Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 and Widnows 95/98/ME? But all other AV software uses the same installer and files for both the Windows 9X based OS and the Windows NT based OS? Does it have anything to do with NOD32 integrating itself into the native NT system or native Windows 9X system, and thus requires different versions because Windows 9X and Windows NT are completely different? But all other AV software runs on top of the standard WIN32 external API which is compatible with the same files and installer across both the 9X and NT platform?

Whether NOD32 uses a lot of kernel resources is not the issue. The issue is:

1) whether NOD32 uses more kernel resources than other AV programs; and
2) whether using more kernel resources has a visible negative impact on performance.

I've tried Norton, Avast, AVG Anti-Virus and NOD32.

NOD32 is by far the fastest at going through a hard drive. Avast and NOD32 IMHO were tied in terms of detecting viruses and trojan horses. NOD32 and AVG were both very lightweight in terms of system resouces, although until now I never checked kernel usage. Norton was effective but visibly slowed system resources.

Based only on my own experiences on my system, NOD32 offered the best combination of speed and performance. But I could see how NOD32 might cause problems if you are running programs or doing other things on your system that required more kernel resources.

So for now I plan to stick to NOD32, but I do appreciate Cluberti offering his insights.

Such as what? Does NOD32 require more kernel resources than most other AV products? And when would other programs need more kernel resources? How can you tell how muhch kernel resources a program is using? Is tyhere a difference between using a lot of kernel resources as opposed to other resources?

Link, all I can say is just check your TaskManager to see that use of NOD32 does cause a significant spike in paged kernel resources.

Is NOD32 kernel usage more than other AVs? I dunno.

I'm happy with NOD32, have had no problems with it and like it better than everything else I've ever tried so I don't plan to test.

Cluberti says that only Macafee had worse kernel usage. I've read a lot of Cluberti's posts and he's very knowledgable and has insights that I'd expect from someone working at M$, so I believe that at the time he tested, NOD32 was probably the 2nd worst offender in terms of kernel usage.

Things might have changed since then as the various AV makers have tweaked and reworked their programs.

How do I check that in Task Manager? On the processes tab, which column do I need to select to be displayed in order to see the paged kernel resources?

BTW: I just displayed Page faults, and NOD32 shows 135813, far more than any other running process. The process that displays the second most page faults is explorer.exe which reads 50034. Is it bad to have that many page faults for one process?

Depends on whether they're page faults in paging in operations, or paging out operations. Page Faults are not necessarily a bad thing, they happen any time a process tries to access a page in memory that has been moved or doesn't exist - the former is normal, the latter is bad .

How do I check paged kernel resources for each process? And what should be the norm for paged kernel resources for background applications?

Whoa - loaded question

As to checking kernel resources, use the "Process" object in perfmon, and select the paged pool counter on the left and the process(es) on the right. For "norm" paged resources, it depends on the application. Also, it can depend on how much RAM is in your machine, registry entries, etc - most systems with 2GB of RAM have ~350MB of pagedpool available at boot, but there's no "norm" for most applications. However, you'll see bigger pagedpool usage on file servers and machines doing large file operations (or lots of small file operations), due to the file system's file cache being stored in paged pool.

Wow, i didn't expect this thread to last this long and cause so much controversy, great to here other peoples opinions on anti-virus for winxp64, and the NOD32, avast, Mc afee, etc. And for the bean heads that work for MS, sit back and listen to what people want in SW, especially anti-virus.

Yeah - and if we release antivirus software, watch a good portion of the world accuse Microsoft of monopolistic practices. It's a no-win situation, although issues like these are why I'm glad the world will ultimately move to 64bit computing in the next 10 years or so.

Apparently Windows Defender will have a subscription antivirus package, so I guess ultimately we are going to get into the antivirus and antispyware markets "officially" when that comes out of beta. For those of us who are employed by MS... duck.

Heres what i think(sitting back watching quietly), this goes against all i believe in but, if MS design a A/V then there will be no-one else to blame if it doesn't work. For a A/V to work with and in an OS, it must incorporate some of the OS architecture, so as to be compatable, and consume less physical mem and less kernal mem, it must also contain a firewall that is intelligent, and adjusts to surfing habits, ie trusted sites etc.
If MS want to regain trust and confidence of its customers, it must offer this free, and updates should be free as well.
MS have made alot of $ from there customers over the years, example, you buy OS, but you need word processor, so you have to buy MSoffice, this should be apart of the package, which is what ppl have been saying for sometime now, monopoly yes, greedy yes, smart no. Linux is looking better all the time.

"Incorporate some of the OS architecture" is going a bit far - anyone that understands how device and filter drivers work can make a firewall or AV product (and at the same time realise there is always a way to circumvent it if a user with administrative privileges launches a malicious process).
Consumption of memory is not as critical as having efficient and stable code - people get a bit hung up on trying to reduce the memory footprint of processes when it can have little or no effect in system performance.

Any "intelligent" software will eventually make a mistake in a decision it makes, changing the users' perception of it being a fantastic feature to a liability - I for one would not want a program to determine for itself what is safe and unsafe, especially regarding trusted sites/zones.

This is what kicked off the anti-trust case against Microsoft - the alleged "bundling" of software that is not essential to the OS which puts vendors of similar products at a disadvantage.
(Only after proving IE provides key rendering services to the OS did it get left incorporated in Windows - the EU forced Microsoft to produce a version of Windows without Media Player so people had the choice to not have it - though I know of noone who opted for this choice.)

AV (with free updates), a fully-featured personal firewall and a word processing package bundled with Windows can never happen due to legal & business practice issues.
Hence why Microsoft can make separate products and sell them so as to not have an unfair advantage over the vendors of competing products.

Even incentives are frowned upon - e.g. "Buy Product X and get Product Y for $1!", so you can't argue that MS Office should be cheaper for people buying Windows at the same time - it's not allowed by law.

If they do that they will be trialed again for breach of antitrust directives and legislation.

I know that's stupid, when in some other buisness, someone makes the hole package- e.g. holiday agencies, its not breach, but when microsoft whats to make a complete software package, its hell breaking lose . Don't misunderstand me, I'm not pro Microsoft, acctually I think, they are one of the worse software making companies in history - but in buisness, product doesn't count for success, marketing and sales do. So if anyone wants to use Windows(WMplayer,IE, OE,notepad,paint,image viewer,scan wizard,...)+Office+Antispyware(Defender)+Firewall+Antivirus+..... --- that's the choice they took, nobody forced it on them... so I say MS go foward!!!


Yes... NOD32 is good if you config it properly...
but to be fair, I downloaded Avast and AVG, and will test them out extensively on my comp and my freinds (always full of viruses )

Ok, points proven, but how many of you can say your machines are virus and spyware free?, i bet none of you. There are always something hidden(may not be causing any problems) in system32 or explorer, that your A/V couldn't find, here's a perfect example, i had nod32, not trial ver, but purchased it, i ran it everyday, upgraded, and it missed 3 trojans, 2 keyloggers, 4 malware. 1 of the trojans was mydoom.b@mm, i have since changed my A/V, and all is good, for now.

What im trying to say is that , MS are going to create a A/V, and while that may seem evil and just another ploy by their marketing department to force a monopolistic SW on us, some good may come from this, like this, imagine a A/V that detects ALL viruses and spyware, 100%, it would be asking alot, i know, and there are some of you out there who dont thinks thats achievable. I guess we will have to wait and see

It isn't achievable, reliable virus detection has to work off signatures - known patterns of strings that occur in sequences within a file.
This makes it a reactive process: the virus has to appear, be noticed, have a signature developed and available for download, then the users download the updates - this is the window where the virus is out in the wild and potentially dangerous.

There are "heuristic" ways of scanning files to see what "might" be a virus, but these often don't even successfully spot variants of existing viruses so I don't rate those highly.

There's no "silver bullet" for malware - the method of deployment, infection and function is down to the whim of the guy that programmed it, as well as the target for their malicious code.

A common argument is that the more competition that exists in a market, the higher the quality of the products as the companies have to outshine one another - this has been thrown around aimed at Microsoft as people perceive monopolistic practises, but it has to swing both ways.

I do agree with you that the quality of the offering from Microsoft is likely to be better than 3rd party ones (in terms of UI and engine) as their programmers have a lot more experience with kernel mode programming, writing for multiple platforms, making code efficient and interacting with the OS in supported ways.
The AV vendors have years of experience specifically with virus detection and signatures, so may have a head start in that area - however with technologies like BITS, Microsoft may have an update process that is more lean, efficient and has less of an impact.

As I said, configuration is 9/10 of program usability...

NOD32 can be set to deep scan- advanced heuristic...

By setting this, I cought a number of trojans, which were reported as unknown version of known viruses... so I uploaded them to Eset lab for further analisys...

...yes, Don't expect perfection and 100% efficiency of any program... cause it will never happen, instead try to find advantages and disadvantages in a program and make the best of it.