Yoo Hoo. Someone gave us a thumb drive with a virus, now our Unity and all 12 connected Avids, including Symphony Nitris, Adrenaline, XPress, and MC's have it also. Does anyone run AntiVirus software on their Avids and if so which seems to work best? Our graphic department uses Kapersky and swears by it. They have it set to not do anything till late at night then do it's scan and cleaning.

We've thought of shutting everything down, one computer at a time, installing antivirus software, doing the scan, fixing the problem then uninstalling the software then shut down the computer then move on to the next.

I'm not so worried about the workstations but we just got a new Unity and I'm not sure how antivirus software will play with it.

Any thouhts? 

We've been running NOD32 on DS Nitris & Symphiony Nitris, with auto-protect enabled.  Unsupported?  Probably.  Meanwhile, no problems so far.

Also, I have favorites set up in RegEdit, so I can locate the sneaky little !@#$%^'s.  One popular place they hide is in the MountPoints:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2

Scroll down to the drive letters, and see if you have a 3rd line in there.  Often, it'll be an autorun.ini file.  I just kill the entire MountPoint.  It'll rebuild when necessary.

... not for the weak-hearted.

 Thanks Randall. Do you use local storage or Unity? That's how all the workstations got it so I'm afraid we'll have to put it on Unity also. I can manually remove the virus from a workstation by deleting the files and going into regedit and modifying the registry but as soon as it sees Unity, the virus comes back. I'm  WAY leery of doing regedit on Unity since each Jbod has it's own computer and it's a very expensive thing to screw up.

All of our HD systems are on TerraBlock.  The RegEdit hack is only being done on the clients.

 All of our Avids have anti-virus software running.  It has not seemingly caused any problems to my knowledge and has saved several system rebuilds after it has detected virii coming in on media drives, cds, dvds and especially USB pens on systems with autoplay activated.   Wouldn't consider running a PC without it. 

 What anti-virus software do you use?

 NOD32 ...

Hi Randall,

Do you have NOD32 Smart Security or just the Anti-virus package?  Have you tried any other anti-virus?  I was curious if Kaspersky would play ok with Avid?  Are you saying you can keep the anti-virus actively scanning while you edit?  Or do you need to disable it when you are editing?

My system has been acting a little strange, and one of my hard drives has been having errors (it's a new drive.. not sure if it's going bad) so I'm thinking I might need some protection (since the computer is plugged into the internet).  I'll have to check my registry when I get home... thanks for the tips!

-Peter B

Previously, we were using Symatec Corporate Edition.  However, we left Auto-Protect off, as Symantec is a bit of a system hog.  I'm replacing that with the basic NOD32, and leaving Auto-Protect on.  We've seen no issues so far.  Our IS department is seriously considering switching to NOD32 for our corporate use as well.

NOD32 finds virii that Symantec doesn't, and also includes spyware protection.

Randall,

Question for you... so I installed NOD32 and it seems like a pretty good program... but how do you close the program?  There are times where I want to exit the program and I can't find a way to quit or exit.   Also how can I keep it from searching for updates... there are times where my computer is unplugged and I'd prefer to manually update it.  I know you didn't create the software but I thought you might be able to help.

thanks,

-Peter B

 You can't close NOD 32 or most other AV apps, as they run as a service in the background and have to fight virus which try to switch them off.  It has to be as difficult as possible to switch off or delete AV software or it would be all too easy to amok on your PC.  From memory, there's a setting in NOD32 to switch auto update off,  just click on the triangles to reveal the menus.  I would keep it on all the time as NOD 32 uses less system resources than other AV apps.

As mentioned, you can modify Automatic Updatrs.  You can also turn it off temporarily, but it will resume on reboot.  I've never seen a way to shut it down permanently.

 Most apps and services can be switched off (on reboot) by going here.

[start]>[run] type in msconfig

This brings up a window.  Go to startup and services and uncheck the nod32 or whatever to stop the service on reboot.  On restarting the system, you will get a box saying the system has been modified.  Check the box to say you know about it.

Thanks for the clairification.  Guess I will have to lodge my complaint with ESET.  I understand about wanting to keep the computer protected all the time...but there are times where I want to be able to exit the program completely (when I need to install trusted software for example).  Also my computer has slowed down quite a bit recently and I wanted to test to see how much of that slowdown is from NOD 32.   Just wish it was easier to turn the program on and off... but I will follow your advice about shutting down the service so I can test.

thanks again,

-Peter

 I use Eset NOD32 without any problems, it's much lighter than Norton for example.