Viruses and their effect on gaming...

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DudE132

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I really need some answers to clear things up about viruses and the effects they can have on games. Can anybody tell me what exactly viruses can do to games? I'm just curious because I am running into quite a lot of issues with my games and just want to know if I can rule this out or if things are more serious than I hope.

Can viruses cause games to have FPS drops, low FPS, any type of flickering, pop in, stuttering, etc?
 
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HEXiT

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all that and more. they can fill up your memory so eventually the game will slow down to a stall. others will rewrite your file system to the point you can no longer access anything...


always have a good firewall, always have an antivirus turned on and set to active scanning.
always get the best antivirus available, regardless of your fanboi nature telling you not to... ie stay away from mcafee and norton they are garbage wrapped in pretty paper, and any 1 who tells you otherwise is an idiot... thats no joke. if some 1 recommend you norton, remove him from your tech friends list and black list him because he knows nothing other than sales pitch... never ask him advice on hardware or anything for that matter because he doesnt actually know anything...
he is a corporate sheep and should be kept in his own little pen as not to infect the whole herd with his foot in mouth disease...
 
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HEXiT

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what rant... oh your 1 of the sheep i guess... as i can think of no other reason why you would try to make something out of nothing... im sowwee i hurted yaw feelinns... me so sowweee....

:kaola:

seriously grow up. i didnt name you or insult you but you seem to have taken offense...
 
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HEXiT

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it works as long as your very carefull about what you download... which sorta defeats the point of an antivirus...
there are better alternatives. avira, kaspersky,bitdefender, nod32 are all better. some are free while others are reasonably cheap. kaspersky is less than £15 a year and is well worth it.
 
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pdxalex

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You can't possibly be that dense. As I rely on Norton for my security needs and do recommend their product to others, you're essentially labeling me a corporate sheep and clueless idiot.

I hope you're not this slow when you're gaming.



And you're telling me to grow up, eh... that's brilliant.
 
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HEXiT

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its called sarcasm

as for noton please tell us how many infections you have on your pc... when you scan with a decent antivirus... say avira...
i guarantee if its a home pc and you have a teenage son it will be in the 10's of dozens.

so yeah if you use norton your guaranteed to be infected badly within 6 weeks of it installing..
how do i know because 95% of the machines i clean have norton on them and 95% of them will be infected next month when i go to clean them again. i have told the firms management to get a better product but they refuse to listen because they know better than sum1 who actually does it for a living.
the reason people say use norton for businesses is businesses tend to have much tighter controls on what can and cannot be accesses. in reality this has more of an effect on combating viruses than norton does.
but that being said i will recommend it to certain companies. just because i know they will have to call me back in a month and pay me to clean there machines.
i will tell then 1s to change there av and if they dont take the advice then i leave em to it...
nortons 75% catch rate is 20% lower than the best av's out so yeah its a money spinner for me. but i still wouldn't recommend it to the home user or people on here.


 
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HEXiT

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http://www.av-comparatives.org/en/home for an unbias review ... you notice norton isnt in this list. not because it didnt pass the test but because norton do not want you to know how poor it is. it consistently gave poor results thus norton refused to allow any more testing... that says it all...


oh and have you tried removing norton from a pc? even with the removal tool you will be editing the registry 3 months later when you get a message sayiong norton is out of date... yet you got ridd of it 3 months ago... lulz yeah norton is the shizzle.
 
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pdxalex

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I work from home, run three online PCs for work and play, and am sorry to say they're all clean. I'm more concerned about my Macbook not running anything at all.

Why I even bothered, I don't know... I guess I try to keep an open mind. So here you go:

avira.jpg


I suppose next you'll tell me the screengrab is photoshopped.



If that were even remotely true, Norton would be out of business.



Interesting, because I know of at least one other experienced user on here who does it for a living as well - and he doesn't share your opinion. In his experience it's quite the opposite.



Maybe you should just be concentrating on formulating halfway coherent sentences?



Yes, of course.

Anyway, to each his own.

I'm off to bed.
 
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HEXiT

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i dunno about that 1 but yeah it sux.
and no you didnt photoshop it but its strange you come out with that 1... i guess i know you from elsewhere...
oh and quick scanning with heuristics off doesn't mean yer pc is clean... reason i know is your hidden files which every copy of win 7 has arent listed... your showing no warnings of which there should be at least 2.
but hey il give you the benefit of the doubt and say yer lucky, you probably surf safe and dont download much...
me i dont surf safe. i download anything and everything and often clear 1tb per month on my downloads. if you were doing anywhere near that much data well... need i say more...

oh and spelling mistakes well im dyslexic so i keep it simple and still i make em even with spell check... swapping an m for an n can make a sentence illegible, but trying to use it against sum1 just shows you to be well need i go on...

 
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jakepf1

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Well norton 360 v3 use to be really good and when norton 360 v4 came out that's when it became so much cheaper and it was no longer good but some people said they got brought out don't know what to believe anymore
 
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jakepf1

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Even if it does or does not make viruses it still sucks because it likes to use a lot of system usage I use avg Internet security it's sleightly faster and doesn't use as much memory
 
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Onlyusemeisaac

Onlyusemeisaac

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The thing about Norton is that it does a good job of keeping viruses off your computer - at the expense of freedom and system performance. It's such a resource hog.

AVG Free, Avast! and Microsoft Security Essentials all do a good job of keeping your system virus free. The occasional scan with MalwareBytes is also recommended.

All these programs are completely free to use, and I highly recommend them.
 
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DudE132

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Since I am like yourself in the sense that I dont surf safe and download a lot, what is the best way to make sure I dont have viruses and if I do how can I get rid of them? I've always used Avast and whetehr I full scan or quick scan, it never finds anything which in a way surprises me. I at least expect a couple at times :p I also do scans with Malwarebytes.

I'm currently installing Free Avira and will do scans with that too.

 
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emmveegee

emmveegee

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If you just need to run a scan, I recommend DrWeb CureIT. It's free and, in my exprience, significantly more thorough than the free suites. They're better than having nothing at all, but if you have any suspicions, CureIT is the way to go.
 
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pdxalex

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I don't think so. I frequent quite a few forums but mostly lurk on similar sites. I really don't see what my results not meeting your expectations has anything to do with possibly knowing me, lol...



Heuristics aren't "off" by default and I don't know why you'd assume I would disable them. However, let's see what happens. As I had already uninstalled it, I plopped the installer onto a usb stick to let it run on another rig with recursion depth left at default 20 and everything else maxed - including heuristics, which was set to 'high'.

Result: 0 hidden objects, 0 detections, 0 suspicious files, 2 warnings

You were right on the 2 'warnings', but unfortunately merely due to coincidence as both are unrelated to Win7:

avira3.jpg


One is obviously the avira installer whereas NPVR/uninstall.exe is from WinTV. It begs the question why Avira is even flagging its own installer. Then again, it does have a reputation for false-positives as well.



I spend far too much time on the net, more than I should. I download quite a lot and don't exercise any extra caution save for some plain old common sense - and take care when websites are flagged by Norton. What I don't download is pirated content and I have no interest in cracks, patches, or keygens. If someone ventures into that area and gets infected it's their own fault, regardless of what protection they're running... good for them, really.



At the expense of freedom? A resource hog? What are you running, a C64? :)

Norton is currently sitting in the tray, memory usage is at 6MB and CPU usage isn't registering. Considering 6MB a resource hog is downright comical. Further, if you're running the free version of Avira, Avast, etc, they won't be sufficient to safeguard your PC on their own. Most people using free protection typically run 3 individual apps.

Anyway, seeing as how I currently have both Norton and Avira installed again, let's see what happens when I ask both to actually do some work:

The Norton "resource hog":
scannorton.jpg


(csrss.exe isn't part of Norton, btw... I should've cropped it out)

Avira:
scanavira.jpg


Seriously?

Both are set to normal priority and are running on similar i7 machines. I even ended up installing Avast, which shows similar usage to Norton while actively scanning.



You know, I'd actually consider apologizing if it weren't for you labeling people idiots and what not ;)
 
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tjosborne

tjosborne

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=
 
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alexinnes

alexinnes

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TL:DR

A rubbish AV is better than no AV at all. People have there opinions on them but its all about preference, there is a 20%ish percent swing from the best to worst.
@HEXiT & @pdxalex Your argument is not answering the question.
 
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