General Discussions

I was wondering if people on the message boards or the CH staff could post antivirus programs that work without having to add program exceptions to the antivirus. In other words a av that just works with CH cheats. I currently use Zone Alarm free av+firewall that works properly but I think something slipped through the cracks virus wise that screwed up my system forcing a reinstall of windows. What happened is just by chance I restarted my system after a game session of ace combat: assault horizon on steam. After the restart I couldn't install video drivers off of a flash drive and my sound wasn't working. I took out my sound card (sb recon 3d pci-e) and installed the onboard sound to diagnose. The onboard sound didn't work. Then I thought my speakers died. So, eventually as a final diagnosis/repair, I reinstalled windows. Everything is working now as usual but I am wanting to purchase a paid antivirus that doesn't delete or force av changes but protects the pc much better. Two that were recommended to me are kaspersky pure 3.0 and in general norton products. I know Norton needs it's own uninstaller. And for av's, I have tried Avast free, comodo internet security free, Avira free and AVG free. All of the following are a PITA when it comes to CH cheats deleting the trainer upon execution. I have seen a sticky before somewhere in here talking about the problem but not solutions. Please help.

edit: also, my boot times went to a crawl when things went weird. And I am not talking about slow boot due to raiding two ssd's. I am using two ocz agility 3 ssd's as my boot/apps drive.

[Edited by wheeljack12, 4/27/2014 12:11:06 PM]

Personally I would advise AVG. But you still put them in Exception bit tho. I dont know any that would not need to do that.

But this is personal choice as this then allows me to know what is being allowed through. Other than not knowing. Even though we know CHTrainers are not viruses.

Neo7 would be the man to give a more better detailed answer to your question.

yeah, I know CH trainers aren't viruses. One time I saw a cheat happens cheat listed as a cheat hack virus on one of the free av's I have used. I mean are AV companies getting kickbacks from entertainment companies for keeping us cheaters away from their software? You know, I am 40 years old. So, I remember the days when every 1st person shooter had a console to enter cheat codes given out by the industry. Why? Because most of the gaming industry respected the gamer in the sense that some portions of games are so hard that you can't complete the game unless you had MENSA like intelligence. Don't get me wrong, I feel like I have got every cent from Cheathappens and if the money were there, I would donate just because they do the work that the gaming industry is too lazy to do for the most part now. I had avast free for awhile where avast free pretty much had a problem with steam in general. It found it to a false positive and would delete portions of the steam app/games. Then they allowed exceptions for executables. And with AV's in general, sometimes they are too powerful in terms of protection. Bitdefender being one of them. I had the paid and free antvirus from them are there are no ways of making executable exceptions with them. On wed or thurs of this week, I am giving kaspersky internet security a try via ordering through my local pc shop. Was told and have known the good repuation of kaspersky but have been fearful to try them out because of executable exceptions which I now know u. I feel for you guys who are gaming multiple games at a time and going into your av for executable exceptions. I play my games like fine wine. I play a mission or two depending on the game per day. To PWizard, 0x90 and Caliber, on behalf of me at least, I would like to formally apologize for ever riding your butts because of what I have just said, it's proabably true about the kickbacks otherwise Gabe Newell and his staff wouldn't have attempted to make a steam patch to outlaw Cheat happens cheats. You know what I would do. I would ask valve to send it's publishers/developers your way and get some ad money from them to advertise on the site. In return, you guys get valve to make the promise never to interfere with CH again.

No they aren't getting kickbacks.

It comes down to Heuristics. A google search will give you a more definitive answer and will save me typing out 4000 words to describe it.

I think one issue here is not understanding how malware in general works here.

All malware has a purpose that sometimes is not easily determined. The most common reasons are (1) to add your computer to a botnet to create a network for parallel computing, (2) to trick you into paying money for fake services or as a randsome for your files, (3) install a keylogger to hijack sensitive accounts.

Here's the most common misconception of malware: Malware almost always never includes a computer crashing as part of their plan. If a computer is crippled or offline then it cannot carry out its intended payload. The best case scenario for malware is to be installed without you ever knowing so. As such, when a computer restarts or is not acting as intended, it's almost always a driver or hardware issue.

With that said, it looks like you're spending way too much effort on the AV and Firewall (the former is the absolute last wall of defense while the latter is usually the first or second one). I believe you may be neglecting all the stuff in between those two items. I would suggest reading this on computer security if you want to better secure your system (exclude EMET section as that is known to cause issues with trainers).

Link

[Edited by Neo7, 4/27/2014 4:48:09 PM]

EDIT: Your slow boot times may be a side affect of bloat creep that is caused by necessary programs you may be installing. It's very easy to neglect and not pay attention to this and is compounded further by installing more stuff to try to improve performance. Rule of thumb: Keep it simple and only install it if you need it. If you love to try out software and evaluate then consider setting up a VM architecture for test environments that you're free to trash without affecting the real system (VirtualBox is free for this purpose).

[Edited by Neo7, 4/27/2014 4:55:39 PM]

well, I use a custom built pc with desktop apps I only use. So there is no bloatware. Also, I turn off the unnecssary startup items in msconfig to conserve resources. And I turn off some recommended (by ssd review's ssd guides) system services also. And I have done both dozen's of times without a hiccup. That was my 1st thought Neo was that it was the driver. But I tried 3 forms of audio (discrete card,onboard and video card pass through). When I tried installing the pass through HDMI audio drivers for my nvidia gtx 770, I kept getting the error that it could install fresh over the installed video drivers since they are required by nvidia's installer. And for the other sound drivers, I couldn't change bitrates and khz sample settings either through sound settings in the control panel or the system tray. And I even checked by changing speakers just to make sure it no t them since I couldn't get sound from amy source. I am starting to suspect it maybe my ssd's (two ocz agility 3 90gb's in raid 0) starting to go so because as soon as I did a reformat, all was fine. I am looking forward to replacing them with two samsung 840 pro 256 gb drives at the end of may.


I chose McAfee Internet Security 2014. Easy to add firewall exceptions and scored 5.5 out of 6.0 for protection on www.av-test.org. They score windows 8,8.1 and 7 for the most common used av's (some of them are full security suites). I found the perfect 6.0 protection antivirus program to be too protective. For instance, bitdefender forced me to uninstall spywareblaster 5.0 and spybot search and destroy (both free versions) before installing the app. Then I had a hard time finding the exception area for the internet security firewall. McAfee internet security at my local store was $30 (mcafee's online store wants $55!) and I found to be simple and straight forward. And it's catching intrusion attempts unlike zone alarm which I suspect is using the windows firewall.

[Edited by wheeljack12, 5/2/2014 10:59:11 AM]

[Edited by wheeljack12, 5/2/2014 11:05:53 AM]

[Edited by wheeljack12, 5/2/2014 11:08:15 AM]