The computer market is brimming with antivirus software suites, expressing that theirs is the best and promising you excellent detection results and safe riding on the web. The main problem with some of this data is that it tends to be inclination.
Either the reviews are written by an affiliate commission for each sale or the antivirus company itself provides its own special data to convince you to purchase.
This article will provide you with the steps required to performance test any antivirus software suites that you might be interested in buying to run on your PC. The test results will provide you with real-time data about how the antivirus packages run on your PC, permitting you to make the right buying decision first time round.
Preparation
Before you take the plunge and begin testing your antivirus suites, you ought to give your PC a performance service with one of the many free utilities available online.
Advanced System Care is a decent clean-up/tweak utility that will give your PC a deep clean with a simple one-trick interface. Before running any clean-up program, make sure you have a current data reinforcement. Once you have used Advanced System Care, you might leave it installed on the off chance that it does not affect a lot on your PC’s resources or just uninstall it.
As a side note, you might conceivably help the performance of your computer too by editing your system’s beginning up file by utilizing the ‘MSConfig’ utility to disable any unnecessary auto-start applications when your PC fires up. In the event that you are curious about this process and are unsure with regards to what to disable then use the Advanced System Care program.
Online Research
In spite of the fact that you can gather some useful data from the reviewer or the vendor’s website, it is generally wise to check the online discussions or read independent reviews about the item you are researching, which don’t have a predisposition, preceding your purchase.
One recommended website that offers an unbiased review is av-comparatives.org and provides test results for the overwhelming majority antivirus products.
The two test results of interest are the detection and removal results, as you will be doing your own performance testing to see how the antivirus suites affect your specific PC inside its own hardware/software environment. The detection and removal results are displayed by tapping on the ‘comparatives’ tab on the primary page of the av-comparatives website.
Not Created Equal
The principal reason for performance testing antivirus products is that not all antivirus packages are created equal when it comes to giving PC and web perusing protection, memory usage, foundation filtering speeds, infection detection and removal, etc.
Least Requirements
Antivirus suites ought to have essentially the accompanying modules:
* Antivirus
* Antirootkit
* Against Phising
* Antispyware
* Antimalware
* Antitrojan
* Antiworm
* Antispam
* Safe Perusing
* Firewall
* Real-time checking
* Scheduled filtering
* Programmed definition refreshing
Create a Short Rundown
You should create a short rundown of the antivirus packages available that fit the above criteria for downloading, based on your online research.
Online Antivirus Sweep
On the off chance that you don’t have any antivirus software currently installed on your PC and you have been riding the web, then I firmly suggest you check your system with an online antivirus scanner before you download and introduce any preliminary antivirus suites.
To do this, simply type in the Google search box “free online antivirus scanner” (without the quotes) and chose a well-referred to scanner, for example, Trend, AVG, Kaspersky, Comodo, McAfee or Eset then adhere to the onscreen directions to introduce the necessary software for the online scanner to run. Once the output has completed and removed any infections, in the event that any, you are ready to download, introduce and begin testing your preliminary antivirus suites.
Installed Antivirus Software
On the off chance that you currently have any antivirus software already installed on your system, this must initially be uninstalled completely and your system restarted before introducing any preliminary antivirus packages.
Recommended Uninstaller Program
A decent uninstaller program that is free is Revo Uninstaller. It does an excellent occupation of cleaning the registry of any leftover entries from your old antivirus program that its own uninstaller leaves behind.
To locate the uninstaller program simply type into Google “free Revo Uninstaller” (without the quotes), then download and introduce it.
After you have downloaded and installed Revo Uninstaller, use it to uninstall your current antivirus program. Check pages 6-9 of the help guide by tapping on the help tab on the Revo Uninstaller menu bar to take you through the uninstall procedure.
On the off chance that for reasons unknown, when you attend introduce an antivirus court date and it won’t introduce due to some leftover files from the previous antivirus program then download the previous installed antivirus programs removal utility from the vendor’s web site and run it.
N.B. Restart your computer after you have uninstalled the antivirus program.
System Resource Usage
The first and most significant consideration when testing any antivirus suite is to note how much memory and computer resources it uses when running behind the scenes or potentially performing a scheduled output, as this will be one of the deciding elements in your purchase.
Therefore, before introducing any preliminary software you should check and note down how much memory and central processor resource is currently being used on your system, so you can compare it to the memory and computer chip usage of your preliminary antivirus suites.
Instructions to Check System Resource Usage
To check current memory and central processor usage on a Windows 7/Vista computer, right-click on the taskbar (the taskbar is the dark/blue bar at the lower part of your screen) then left-click on ‘start task manager
To check current memory and central processor usage on a Windows XP/2000 computer, right-click on the taskbar (the taskbar is the ill-defined situation at the lower part of your screen) then left-click on ‘start task manager
Click on the “performance” tab inside “windows task manager”. This screen shows the memory and central processor usage of your computer.
Once you have noted the memory and computer chip usage without the preliminary software installed on your system you can now feel free to introduce the preliminary antivirus package.
After it has been installed and you have restarted your system you need to repeat the above memory and central processor check to note how much memory and computer chip resource is being used by the preliminary antivirus software.
You then need to run a full antivirus output of your system and repeat the memory and central processor check while the antivirus examine is running. Once more, note the memory and central processor usage.
While the sweep is as yet running, open and close a few projects and see how your computer performs. Type some text into notepad and note the response time. Your system will be slower than expected because of the file examining however it actually ought to be usable with an acceptable delay.
Once the file check has been completed, repeat the process of opening and shutting some projects and utilizing notepad to enter text. These fast tests ought to operate typically and immediately.
In the event that there is a noticeable delay (considerably more than expected), the preliminary antivirus program is utilizing a lot of your computer’s resources. This might be remedied by introducing extra memory yet for the meantime, we need to continue with our testing before we make any decision to purchase extra memory.
Once you have completed your testing of the first antivirus preliminary suite, uninstall it according to the guidelines above with the Revo Uninstaller program and repeat the testing process for the other antivirus preliminary suite software you have downloaded.
Results
With your testing completed, you can now make an informed decision regarding which of the antivirus suites best suits your PC. Assuming you have a preferred antivirus package yet it is influencing a lot on the performance of your computer, then you have two choices, introduce an extra slam (that is on the off chance that the smash can be upgraded) or settle for another antivirus suite that does not influence on your PC’s performance.
In the event that your PC performed gravely with all of the antivirus preliminary software, the memory can’t be upgraded and you ran the Advanced System Care before testing the preliminary software then your system might require a re-establishment of the operating system. Be aware that re-introducing the operating system may not resolve the problem assuming the PC’s hardware is excessively old. This leaves you with the choice of replacing your computer or finding an antivirus package that won’t adversely affect your PC…
