Thirtyseven4 Antivirus 2013

By Neil J. Rubenking

When your PC is possessed by diabolical malware, you may feel the only hope for salvation is exorcism by a tough antivirus program. Thirtyseven4 Antivirus 2013 ($29.95 per year direct; $59.95 for three licenses) would seem a likely choice. After all, the company's mission is to "glorify God by using the gifts He has given us [and] ... provide the most secure product line available to our customers at fair and honest prices." Alas, my tests show that in this battle of Good against Evil, the wrong side wins.

It wasn't for lack of trying on Thirtyseven4's part. In addition to the basic antivirus scanner, the product includes separate scanners for rootkits and general malware, as well as a boot-time scanner that runs before Windows has fully started. The company's website also offers a number of free tools for wiping out rogue antivirus programs and other specific types of malware.

Preinstall Scan
During the install process, Thirtyseven4 runs a scan for active malware. On ten of my 12 malware-infested test systems it found and neutralized malware. This allowed the installation to continue, although one system needed to reboot first.

One of my test systems is restricted to running in Safe Mode, because ransomware takes over regular Windows. Thirtyseven4 won't install in Safe Mode, so tech support advised me to download and run their Rogue Remover utility. Rogue Remover wiped out the ransomware and allowed for full installation.

The install process did seem to take rather longer than most, and the mandatory Quick Update after installation was anything but quick. However, the experience was much better than spending hours on phone and live chat with tech support, as I did with McAfee AntiVirus Plus 2013.

Collateral Damage
The full scan wiped out a couple of important Windows files on one test system. That missing file disabled many programs including my browsers and Thirtyseven4 itself. Tech support recommended using System Restore to go back before the problem occurred, or recover from the original Windows disk. Like many real-world users, I don't have a Windows disk, though. And to save space my virtual machines have System Restore disabled. Fortunately their other suggestion, copying the missing file from another system with the exact same Windows version, saved the day.

Full cleanup on another system wiped out an infected keyboard driver, which made working with the system rather awkward. I solved that one by using Device Manager to uninstall and then "rediscover" the keyboard. While either of these problems might have vexed Joe User, solving them wasn't too difficult. I've had much bigger collateral damage problems with other antivirus products.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/i_wRKd0p8k8/0,2817,2413384,00.asp

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