ESET NOD32 Antivirus 5

Many antivirus vendors have adopted a yearly update model, but ESET doesn't swing with that crowd. I reviewed ESET's version 4 in March of 2009, and ESET NOD32 Antivirus 5 ($39.99, direct; $59.99 for three licenses) has just now turned up. This version hasn't changed much in appearance. ESET NOD32 Antivirus 5?s user interface exposes just the information and controls you're likely to need, hiding more complex settings under advanced setup.

During installation you must actively choose whether to enable or disable detection of "potentially unwanted applications." There's no default; you must choose one or the other. Naturally I enabled this feature for testing.

ESET's activation system is a bit awkward. It demands full contact information including physical mail address. Once you've entered a three-license key, you can't use that key again to protect two other PCs. Rather, you must locate the randomly-generated username and password emailed to you after that initial activation and use those for the other two.

Install Trouble, Scan Trouble
Getting ESET installed on my twelve malware-infested test systems was a bit of a challenge. On over half the systems the real-time protection module requested a reboot to finish cleaning up an active threat immediately after installation.

That initial reboot is no problem in itself, but one of those systems became unresponsive after rebooting. I got it working again by using Task Manager to kill and restart Windows Explorer. At that point a message from ESET appeared warning that Explorer was attempting to access a virus and requesting another reboot. I took this as a possible clue that ESET caused the hangup by suspending Windows Explorer, though I couldn't prove it.

I went around this circle five or six times, with a different file each time, before giving up. Fortunately scanning in Safe Mode solved the problem. Another system stuck in a similar fashion, and the icons vanished from ESET's display. Once again a Safe Mode scan solved the problem.

On a third system ESET asked for a reboot to finish wiping out a particular threat. After reboot it did the exact same thing again and again, without end. Something similar happened in my testing of Trend Micro Titanium Antivirus+ 2012 ($39.95 direct, 2.5 stars).

Tech support instructed me to gather logs and use ESET's built-in SysInspector tool. After evaluating the logs they supplied a script for a third-party tool called The Avenger. The script successfully wiped out this persistent threat, but I would have been more impressed had an in-house tool accomplished that feat.

Good Malware Cleanup
With those problems out of the way, testing went quickly. An in-depth scan of the hard drive and operating memory on my standard clean test system finished in 13 minutes. That's faster than Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware Free 1.51 (Free, 4 stars) (14 minutes) and AVG Anti-Virus Free 2012 (Free, 4 stars) (16 minutes). However, a repeat scan with AVG took less than two minutes.

On finishing a scan, ESET reports statistics on what it did. You can click a link for the full scan log, but most users will find it much too detailed. I'd prefer a simple list of threats found, with the individual file and Registry traces hidden by default.

ESET detect 88 percent of the threats, the same as AVG, and scored 6.5 points for malware removal, also the same as AVG. Norton AntiVirus 2012 ($39.99 direct, 4.5 stars) had a slightly lower detection rate, but better cleanup earned it the top removal score of 7.1 points.

Like many of the current antivirus products, ESET detected 100 percent of the scareware (rogue antivirus) samples and scored 9.5 points for scareware removal. Norton and Malwarebytes both managed a perfect 10 on the scareware test.

Quite a few products tested with the current sample set also detected 100 percent of the threats that use rootkit technology. ESET detected 88 percent and scored a so-so 5.3 points for rootkit removal. For an explanation of how I boil down a product's behavior into a malware removal score see How We Test Malware Removal.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/0c0WbRZades/0,2817,2392633,00.asp

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