Best AV for 98SE

[celtish]

Grisoft ducked out of AVG Anti-Virus for Win98SE after version 7.5 (December 12th 2006).

The last file is avg75f_433a879.exe

Edited February 19, 2008 by celtish

[Jlo555]

Never mind, I resolved the issue. I guess Win98SE is so old, that my university only forces me to install Cisco Clean Access for authentication, but skips all the AV/firewall/anti-spyware checks. It's there way of saying "no body cares about your OS anymore, use the internet at your own risk." YAY for ME!!! sucks to be a win2000/XP/Vista user haha! In this day and age, should I be worried that I'm using a university network with no AV or anything?

Just one more advantage to using old technology...nobody else cares enough about it to sabotage it.

[CooledComputer]

precisely!

i love old tech, its fun to mess with.

i wouldn't worry about viruses so much, even on a university network

[alexanrs]

In this day and age, should I be worried that I'm using a university network with no AV or anything?

If you have safe computing habits, shouldn't be much of a problem, specially since you are in an university network, which means you are behind a router with a firewall. But I'd install an AV just in case, even if it is a little outdated (old systems, mostly old viruses )

[herbalist]

In this day and age, should I be worried that I'm using a university network with no AV or anything?

On a university network, I'd be more concerned about other users on the network trying to gain access to your PC. In that situation, I'd consider installing a software firewall. Rule based firewalls like Kerio 2.1.5 are extremely light, even on 9X systems that are using the original hardware. If nothing else, close the NETBIOS ports by unbinding TCP/IP from the network services. Instructions for doing this can be found here.

98 can be safely used without an AV, especially if you're careful and use an alternate browser. There are more effective ways to protect a PC from malicious code that are much lighter than any AV. You can set up a default-deny security policy that allows only the system processes and user apps you specify to run. A default-deny policy is best suited to systems that are finished, equipped the way the user wants it. It's an ideal security policy for users who know their systems well, what the processes do, which are necessary for the tasks you perform, etc. Default-deny is less effective on systems that are changing often or when users like to try out new software regularly. It's not a good choice for users who aren't knowlegable about their systems.

The average 98 box has about 50 executables that get used during normal operation. It takes far less processor power, disk space, memory, etc to set up a policy that allows the necessary activities of those 50 or so necessary processes than it does to use an AV to check every accessed file, process, etc against a database of about a half a million identified pieces of malicious code, many of which don't affect 9X systems.

Rick