NOD32 gets an upgrade

Just received this e-newsletter from Eset. Existing NOD32 users can upgrade for free. I'll upgrade mine when I get back to the house later on today. I can't say I think it needs upgrading but if it's better then that can only be a good thing! I'll post later to let you know how it goes (on Vista HP x64) or if anything goes pearshaped..



7 November, 2007

ESET NOD32 Antivirus Version 3.0 and ESET Smart Security
We're pleased to announce the release of ESET NOD32 Antivirus Version 3.0 and ESET Smart Security, a new, integrated security solution for consumers and SMEs, built on ESET’s award-winning advanced heuristic ThreatSense® detection system and the ESET NOD32 scanning engine.

ESET Smart Security is a fully integrated security solution that includes antivirus, anti-spyware, a personal firewall and antispam. While some competitive solutions purport to have similar functionality, ESET has developed a unique approach that provides true and full integration of point security solutions. The key advantage of this approach is that individual protection modules are able to communicate together seamlessly to create unparalleled synergy to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of protection. Moreover, the integrated architecture guarantees optimal utilisation of system resources, so ESET Smart Security continues our well know reputation for providing rock solid security in a small footprint that will not slow down your computer.

ESET Smart Security has already received a glowing review by John Hawes at Virus Bulletin (November 2007).

"ESET seems to have upped the ante considerably here. While NOD32 has always been a cutting-edge product in technical terms, usability has seemed very much an afterthought in previous versions, at least as far as general users were concerned. In a sudden leap, this new product has shaken off the complexity and actually taken something of a lead in terms of ease of use. The default settings put in place in a few easy steps during the installation seem ideal for general purpose use, information and alerting is clear and helpful without ever seeming intrusive or scare-mongering, and detailed configuration is about as straightforward and painless as such things can be. With the user experience reduced to an installation process, and possibly the occasional alert as another attack is spotted and blocked effortlessly, the unobtrusiveness is further enhanced by the product’s legendary lightning speed, miraculously unimpeded by the additional protection, keeping overheads to a level barely noticeable on modern high-powered systems. Lacking full behavioural monitoring may help minimize the slowdown, but with the level of in-depth analysis and emulation going on during scanning the performance is most impressive. As vendors release their latest 2008 product ranges, the addition of new supplementary modules seems to be all the rage, most suites now sprawling with diverse functionality, often at the expense of user-friendliness and occasionally posing dangers of their own. ESET has resisted the temptation to sprinkle in too many extras, focusing instead on the core requirements of a security system. Covering all the essential bases with a smoothly integrated set of protective barriers, the combination of top-of-the-range detection, response time, heuristics and throughput with excellent presentation and design will make Smart Security pretty hard to beat."

Home Editions (up to 4 licences) of ESET NOD32 Antivirus Version 3.0 and ESET Smart Security are available now. Business Editions (5+ licences) will be available from 26th November 2007.

Existing NOD32 users can upgrade to ESET NOD32 Antivirus Version 3.0 free of charge using your current Username and Password. The installer is available from http://www.eset.co.uk/download/registered_software.php. If you require a copy of your licence details these can be found at http://www.eset.co.uk/lost.

ESET Smart Security prevents, detects and removes malware such as adware, bots, rootkits, spyware, trojans, viruses, worms and other Internet threats you face on the job, at home and everywhere your computer goes. We'd highly recommend migrating to ESET Smart Security and for a limited time existing users can migrate at reduced cost by visiting https://secure.eset.co.uk/order/migratelicence.asp

More details on the complete range of ESET Products can be found here http://www.eset.co.uk/smartsecurity/ENA-ESSV3.pdf

 

Is it better than NOD32 2.70 in performance? I mean in the latest version they've put the ease of use etc, but when it comes to fighting the viruses, they'll be both be same, or the latest one is better in some way?

 

That is what I've been wondering, how do you prove it is more effective than the last? If it's just down to it being less obtrusive if it weren't for the icon in my system tray I wouldn't know it's there so 3.0 can't beat it on that.. I'll still give it a go and see, I've still got my current installer just in case!

 

Just upgraded to the new version. Pretty drastic change in the GUI and it seems easier to navigate, and verything is now in a single window.

However, the new http scanner slowed my connection down to a crawl for what reason I don't know. My previous v2.7 did not have this issue, but I'm not sure if it's some setting that was changed.

For now, I'm just excluding http scanning for firefox but is this safe to use? What will happen if I run across a malicious website?

 

Just upgraded also and I'm surprised that even with the extra features system resources barely went up to 3MB. That's awesome if you ask me and I highly recommend NOD32 to everyone.

 

Well I just upgraded mine, everything went smoothly. As uw748 said there's a new GUI and wait for it.... a new system try icon... very nice...

Single clicking on the system tray icon give you 3 basic reporting options which you can toggle on and off. Double clicking brings up the main NOD32 window as you'd expect. To get to all the settings you need to go to the setup window then choose "enter entire advanced setup tree" there you will find pretty much every setting you need. The new GUI is much more intuitive & user friendly.

Anyway, nothing went pear shaped and it all seems to be running sweetly. I can't say I've noticed any slow down with the http scanner switched on.

.. as soldier0316 said I'd highly recommend it to anyone too.

 

anyone tried the eset security suite already? i read in wilders that its full of bugs...anyone can confirm this?

 

Would you mind if it's not too much trouble, try turning off the http checking or excluding your browser to see if it makes any difference? Some pages just take longer to load, seems to be waiting for files to be ready and then slowly loads them. Even google takes around 4 seconds (Extended Statusbar addon) to load up, and that is slow.

I'm using the latest firefox on Vista Business 32bit, if this makes any difference (IE is also affected when scanned).

Did some more tweaking/testing, and seems that if I enable the active http scanning for firefox (instead of just the compatible mode) the time to load a page is OK, but still slower than if I completely disable http checking.

Does anyone know what has changed from v2.7?

 

sure no problem, I'll have to have a look tonight though (it will be in about 12 hours, got a stack of work to do at the moment and I'm working on a mac). I run it on Vista HP 64 bit, I'll check it with IE and FF. I'll let you know how it goes later.

 

Thanks a bunch, though I wonder what is the effect if the http checking is disabled. Is imon enabled by default in v2.7? Even though I did not experience any performance degrade before this upgrade.

 

I never actually changed any settings in 2.7 and when I checked through them before I upgraded IMON was switched on.

Just out of interest what speed is your normal internet connection? Do you use a proxy?

 

I am using the Smart Suite right now and so far so good, I did some tests on a few undesirable sites known for viruses spyware and other crap and the Smart /suite so far did its job and it did it very well, currently I am studying the firewall and so far I like it, but its just the beginning of my own personal testing, I will try to pound the crap out of the software to see what I can do.

 

Well I've just cleared my cache and tried IE7(with Pro 0.9.20 plugin) with 4 tabs set to load on start up and can't say I could see any difference with or without HTTP scanning on. Going to try FF now..

Hmm I've tried it a few times now in FF 2.0.0.9 with and without (clearing the cache each time) and it could be my imagination but there might be a tiny difference in load times. Thing is it is small so that could be just down to my connection not being constant. Google UK is pretty instant to load and BBC News and YouTube and Ubuntu home page only take 1-2 seconds max.

I'm not sure I can spot any difference to be honest! I can't think why the http scanning would cause it that much of a noticeable difference for you.

 

I don't like the new version at all..it seems rushed to me. Nasty looking GUI, too Vista like.

Uses more memory in both regular and scanning modes, the setup is nowhere near as good or sensible as v2. And like others I've see slower browsing using various browsers.

It's a backwards step at this time..speaking of which, I've downgraded.

 

I guess looks are subjective, I quite like it personally and seeing as I use Vista it fits in nicely.

I just had a look at the memory usage and it uses 13,084k on mine and 15,516k whilst scanning (both with minor fluctuations) +/-100k or there abouts), to be honest though I couldn't tell you what it used prior to the upgrade. Any chance you can post what yours uses as a comparison? Whilst I'm looking at my processes ATI Catalyst Control Centre uses around 10,436k (it fluctuates a bit +/- 50k) which I feel is more of a waste of memory than a useful Anti Virus program in all fairness.

 

Well on 'idle' the two related processes were using 40-45Mb, scanning much higher.

2.7 is currently 25Mb.

Not lean and mean it's always had the rep for.

As for the GUI, matter of taste of course, as an XP user who intends to continue using it until it's unfeasible, Vista-a-like looks are not of my choosing. I guess that's why I've avoided WMP11. Although I admit there's plenty of stuff in the advanced settings.

I greatly prefer the use of the modules, AMON, IMON etc and their various settings. Perhaps Eset thought it was too confusing for average joes.

 

damn that is a lot! The processes I'm looking at are listed as ekrn.exe *32 which currently is consuming 14,783kb and egui.exe which is using 4,752kb I wonder why there's such a big difference. I'm not surprised you switched back if it used more whilst scanning.

 

Ok I just updated and tweaked some settings and noticed its using 30mb of RAM idle! When I was using v2.7 idle as at 6mb and maybe 10-15mb on load,,, =(

 

Single clicking on the sys tray icon does nothing for me....what did you mean by that? Double clicking brings up the GUI. Thanks!

 

Well to be honest I can't replicate that at the moment lol as my system tray icon has vanished! What I was doing was just clicking once on the icon and a 3 option menu popped up. I got the same thing if I right clicked on the icon too. I'll try a reboot later and see if my icon comes back and give it a go!

 

I don't use a proxy, and am on ADSL 8M/2M. The connection on another computer without a/v loads up pages very fast, but this one with NOD32 enabled takes over 10 seconds to load.

Does your Web access protection -> HTTP -> Web browsers have anything selected? Is it checkmarked or is the box crossed out?

Oh, and my system tray icon does not respond to either single left click nor right click, only double clicking will bring up the NOD32 GUI.

 

hmm well I just did a few screenshots, can't capture the pop up menu I get with single click/right click though, but that just gives the options:

Display Alerts
Display Notifications on Desktop
Display Balloon tips in Taskbar
Open Window <- just opens NOD32GUI

Here's my processes for the two NOD32 items in normal mode (not scanning)



here's processes whilst scanning local drives



and here are the options I have selected in Web access protection -> HTTP -> Web browsers



I'm using version 3.0.560.0

ah just had a brainwave.. here's a photo of the single click/right click menu..



My internet connection is way slower than yours roughly 1.6-2mbps downstream and 0.6-0.8 upstream.

Anyone else having the slow down problems?

 

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=190251&page=2

Well, post #34 has a big list of pros and cons of v3.0. And post #39 pretty much reflected what I experienced (along with some other posters in that thread).

So, I just uninstalled v3.0 and will probable go back to v2.7 unless eset fixes it with a new version.

 

just one thing I noticed was that they were using a different version to the one I've got..

I'm on version 3.0.560.0
They were on 3.0.5551.0

It looks like Eset changed the installer pretty quickly. I downloaded mine at about 2030 gmt on the 8th Nov. Post #34 was at 1159 gmt on the 8th Nov.

 

OK, so now the latest version is at v3.0.563

I'll give this a try and see what's up, though going through that forum on eset section

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=88&order=desc

does not give a lot of hope. Seems like 2.7 set the bar too high and eset got too over zealous.

 

I hope it works for you, 3.0.560.0 works ok for me so I'll stick with that for now.

good luck!

I've got the 3.0.560.0 msi file (eav_nt64_enu.msi) if you want to try it, I can find a file host somewhere I'm sure. I believe it's 32bit and 64 bit compatible.

 

Well 563 still has that issue for me, so I don't think any other versions will solve it. Must be some weird settings between NOD32 and Vista, but cannot really pinpoint the one.

So back to v2.7, but will keep an eye on the new releases.

Thanks sasanac

 

NOD32 V3.0.563.0

egui.exe = 2,032k
ekrn.exe = 30,096k

With 2G of ram and a peak commit charge of 677,924k I'm not concerned ...