In an unexpected turn of events, Microsoft have become rather chivalrous by aiming to provide a free tool, code-named "Morro," that will provide a basic anti-malware service; protecting against viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans.

This will be offered at the same time, June 30th 2009, as they discontinue their Windows Live OneCare consumer security service.

Morro will have a small footprint and use only a few system resources. The idea is that it will run on low-power PCs and low-bandwidth networks. As a stand-alone download it will support Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Existing OneCare customers will be directed toward using Morro instead when it becomes available. If you are currently and/or up to June 30th 2009 a OneCare user you will continue to be able to use the online backup feature as normal until that date; probably with the same charges attached.

The Windows Live OneCare blog says that this is not due to a poor sales figure, but rather a tactic aimed at bringing protection to millions world-wide who have none. Personally I think it’s probably a bit of both – Oh please; Microsoft aren’t known generally for being that public-spirited, despite being nowhere near as tight and money-grabbing as Apple. I very much doubt that they’d drop a product line that was making them a fortune.

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During 2007, Computer Shopper magazine tested a number of free and paid-for antivirus solutions. NOD 32 came second to Kaspersky. By the time I tried Kaspersky for myself they’d released a new version which was so bloated I thought of Norton. I’d tried NOD 32 previous to this on a single-cored Pentium 4-driven system, however, and was quite impressed by its functionality, ease of use, and small footprint.

During this month; November 2008, I got the chance to try out the full version of Smart Security from ESET, the makers of NOD 32. As a rule I always try out anything new on my second machine, which happens to be currently fitted with a 2.2GHz single-cored Athlon 64 processor.

I installed the product: Installation was quick and painless and I soon had it up and running properly after it had updated itself with all the latest files.

The firewall isn’t intrusive. It keeps track of what’s going in and out; but unlike some it doesn’t continually ask you whether you’d prefer to allow or deny every single connection. It accepts everything acceptable that’s flowing from trusted software which is already installed and does its job silently.

The antivirus scan is well hot: It even informs you if files are corrupted, incomplete, or don’t have a valid checksum, in addition to telling you if any files are infected with spyware or a virus.

The anti-spam I didn’t really try out so I won’t present any data on that.

My overall verdict is that it’s a very good security suite; but the problem is that it has a large footprint: If it almost occupies an entire core; even on a single-cored 64-bit processor, then it’s too big for my liking. On a quad or six-core processor-driven machine things might not be so bad; but certainly I’d say it used far too much CPU for a single or dual-cored machine.

A strange twist to this article occurred whilst I was writing it: I heard a loud click from my second machine, which was right next to me, and a metallic noise. Then nothing appeared to happen out of the ordinary for about a minute, when suddenly that machine stopped, switched off without shutting down.

I hoped that the fault wasn’t as I expected; but on opening the machine my worst fears were confirmed:

The Shuttle motherboard used in its construction, like most other socket AM2 motherboards, keeps the cooler attached to the socket AM2 CPU by means of a fixing where a metal loop attached to a lever is hooked over one of two lugs on the enclosure around processor socket. This lever appears on the other side of the cooler with a similar metal loop attached to it. This other loop is hooked over the other lug and tension is applied to it by means of another lever; therefore the processor and cooler stay in close contact while the cooler is tensioned downwards onto the face of the processor so that heat transfer is maximised with the help of some heat-conductive grease.

The model of Shuttle motherboard used (Now discontinued.) uses a rather brittle material to make the CPU surroundings including these lugs that the cooler depends on to stay in contact with the processor: Not a noticeably brittle material, but nevertheless to brittle for the purpose. I’ve had one or two of these machines returned under warranty with the lugs snapping off after a number of months, rendering the entire motherboard worthless and inoperative. That’s exactly what had happened to my machine (Kustom Komputa Exel model A101-s) which was one of the original machines built by Kustom Komputa in the days when a single-core Athlon was incorporated in them rather than a dual-core. This syndrome I’ve affectionately christened "lug-rot".

So what to do? Suddenly I was reduced to a single machine. Of course I can get by quite easily with only one computer; but it’s always better to have two: I use both at once occasionally, and I always have a spare if one breaks down, as had happened recently when the hard disk died on the other one.

I was planning to publish the article about ESET SS that day; but needs must, I had no backup, and if the other machine went down, as Sod’s law would make sure that it did if I had no backup, then I’d be totally stuffed.

I checked the junk cupboard: I had an old wrecked machine from about 4 years ago which the PSU had burnt out on. It had been checked since and the motherboard was still working. It was an Asrock board, still in a case, and the processor and cooler were still attached. I’d removed and dumped the burnt-out PSU, also I’d used the DDR RAM sticks and the hard drive from it. – Otherwise it was complete except for DDR RAM, PSU, and SATA leads: There was even a SATA DVD-RAM drive fitted but unconnected.

The processor was a 1.8GB AMD Sempron, which was a bit weak for my liking, as well as being only 32-bit, despite the motherboard being 64-bit capable. Seeing I didn’t have any socket 754 single-cored Athlon 64s in stock, which was the only other processor the board would take, the existing 32-bit Sempron would have to do. I had a brand new 300 Watt PSU and a 250 MB stick of DDR2 in stock. That would at least work; although rather weakly. I could use the hard drive from the failed computer…In fact I might be able to simply pop it in and boot up just as before without any problems.

I’m trying to keep this from taking on the proportions of a novel; in other words keep it short: So to cut a long story short I built it as planned and powered up: Rattle rattle rattle. – The hard-drive was having a fit. When it eventually booted it was unbelievably slow and the hard-drive was still thrashing. I had a driver CD for the board, which I managed to install eventually, but the performance didn’t improve to a level which I was anywhere near happy with.

I ended up taking note of everything that I had installed on the system partition C: on that disk and reformatting the partition, reinstalling, optimising, finalising… And now I have a second machine again that works well. I found another 250MB stick of DDR which I installed, and that made the performance so much better. Surprisingly, after reinstalling the Windows XP Home OS and activating it with just the 250MB RAM installed, it told me that I needed to activate it again after installing another 250MB stick!: A notice appeared at boot saying that the hardware specs had changed significantly and that I must reactivate this copy of Windows. – That’s the first time I’ve ever had to reactivate after installing just another single stick of RAM!

So usual scenario: A few hours building it (2 in fact.) and a whole day plus some installing, verifying, optimising the software. It was fun, but it delayed my posting to my blog.

Have you ever built a computer? What was your experience?

Have you ever tried ESET Smart Security? Do you agree with my findings?

Leave a comment below why not? Come on, don’t be shy, don’t leave it to the spammers to make the only comments. – Which I delete if the Akismet anti-spam software doesn’t get there first. Your comment probably won’t be deleted, even if it’s a negative comment. I have a good comment system set up: Use it why not?

As a fairly long-time internet-user, I’ve used a large number of antivirus solutions in my time. I’ve also read quite a few reviews and seen a few products come and go.

There are quite a number of antivirus solutions out there that don’t cost a penny; Avast! and AVG being just two of them. The problem is that, despite appearances, there really is no such thing as a free lunch: The old adage holds true every time to a great extent: "You gets what you pays for."

By now you’ll have guessed correctly that what I’m about to reveal isn’t free software: What it is though is a brand new product that I heard about, and that I now use. It effectively also detected a virus on my personal machine that AVG 8 was unable to see.

Clearly from the test results below, this product is extremely effective – Although a lot of antivirus solutions do sometimes find infections that others miss. The same is true with antispyware.

Another bonus in its favour is that it has only just been developed and is therefore fully suited to today’s computing environment from the word go.

Personally I am most impressed with it, and I rate its performance top-value, up with classics such as Kaspersky and NOD 32. Another plus in its favour is its lack of bloatedness and seemingly small footprint compared to newer versions of some products such as Kaspersky.

OK the suspense is killing you I know; so I’ll reveal the identity of the product:

Click on this link for more information.

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The test was conducted as follows:-

This product has been tested by myself on two new, previously unused Asus motherboards with a used single-cored and a dual-cored processor fitted to each respectively. The hard-drives used in both machines had previously been formatted in NTFS after having been totally cleaned using Webroot System Erase and their function checked using Spinrite.

These two testbed machines were then deliberately randomly infected by being used on the internet for 12 hours without any antispyware or antivirus protection and with the Windows Firewall deactivated. They both were running 32-bit Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3, and they both had all the latest additional updates from Microsoft installed previous to the test.

These machines were then installed with Avast! antivirus. A couple of viruses were detected on each machine by the software during a full scan. The infections were removed and Avast! was uninstalled offline. They were reconnected to the internet having had AVG 8 free antivirus installed on both of them. AVG 8 found spyware on both during a full scan, and also detected another virus on one machine that Avast! has missed.

Normally after this one would expect then to be fairly clean, both of spyware and of viruses.

Next, AVG was uninstalled and the test-subject product was installed on both offline. they were connected to the internet and the test product was finalised and updated. A full scan was then run using the test-subject:

On the dual-core machine another hi-threat virus was found along with a virulent piece of adware/malware plus a spyware cookie. On the single-core machine the identical piece of malware plus two spyware cookies were reported.

Both machines were then scanned by AdAware, which found a few other spyware cookies on each. (AdAware by Lavasoft is an unparalleled spyware detector; the like or equal of which I have never seen to this day.)

The specifications of the testbeds were as follows:-

Motherboard = Asus M2VTVM socket AM2. 64MB onboard graphics, 2 x DDR2 RAM slots, 2 SATA connectors, 2 x IDE.

Processors = AMD Sempron 1800MHz Single-cored and AMD Athlon 64 x 2 2.6Ghz Dual-cored.

RAM = 1GB 667 MHz DDR2

HDD = 40GB SATA Hitachi

Power supplies and any other parts/connectors used were from the spares box