Jump to content

Antivirus for win98


Recommended Posts

Whenever Avast ceases support for win98, there will not be any 'live' antivirus support left for win98. However, I am absolutely satisfied with the performance of win98 and want to continue surfing on it(even though I have dual booting with winXP)

2. There is another angle to win98 story and that is that while it is true that win98 has almost become obsolete, it is equally true that it is not at all attractive for virus writers. Therefore will it be fair to say that it is , in a way, becoming immune to virus threats ??

Link to comment
Share on other sites


While I really don't believe in "Security through Obscurity", this is a controverse subject, with no real consensual answers...

You may want to read Surviving Without a Virus Scanner and Infection with tenga.a virus, for a start.

BTW, what I do, with a setup similar to yours, is having AVG 9 (the paid-for version) in the Win XP partition, and have it scan every partition from there, whenever I boot to XP, which is becoming more and more frequent. I do also have a tweaked AVG 7.5 (still up to date) doing its job on the 9x/ME partition, but that won't last much longer...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

See also the thread at http://www.msfn.org/...more-9x-support

While ClamWin only offers on-demand AV scanning the addition of Clam Sentinel does offer real-time AV features and does deserve better recognition. I personally do not use any resident AV application, but I did test ClamWin with Clam Sentinel and it can be configured to look after any drives or partitions you require. 

I had it looking after just my E: partition which holds four folders for Downloads, Temp Internet Files for IE6, Temp files for FF and Temp files for Opera. I tried the very basic test of trying to download the EICAR test file in it's three forms, basic, zipped and double zipped and all three were immediately quarantined upon download which is an near real-time scanning as you will get from Clamwin. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest wsxedcrfv

Norton Antivirus 2002 is another candidate. It was the last version of NAV that didn't suffer from "bloat-ware" and highly intrusive installation tactics. It doesn't seem to take up a lot of system resources. I run NAV 2002 on some of my win-98 systems, but the internal "Live Update" feature stopped working on all of them a few years ago - but I can still update them by downloading and running something called the Symantec Intelligent Updater (a file that runs about 70 mb and is compiled daily). I even run NAV 2002 on one or two XP systems. I've seen NAV 2002 on Oldversion.com. NAV 2002 is also part of Norton SystemWorks 2002 (I think I've seen that somewhere on the net as well).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Whenever Avast ceases support for win98, there will not be any 'live' antivirus support left for win98.
Not sure. I just updated Kaspersky Anti-Virus v6.0.2.261 under Win98SE, Signature count: 4.104.574, Last update: 5/13/10, several online updates are provided every day. Edited by Multibooter
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I still use Trend PC-cillin 2002 (version 9.06) on my dual boot (98SE/XP) machine, and it still works fine.

I haven't had automatic virus pattern updates for years, but I download and install the latest pattern files from Trend's site manually and they still install and work fine.

I don't know how much longer for of course!

:)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I still use Trend PC-cillin 2002 (version 9.06) on my dual boot (98SE/XP) machine, and it still works fine.

I haven't had automatic virus pattern updates for years, but I download and install the latest pattern files from Trend's site manually and they still install and work fine.

I don't know how much longer for of course!

:)

Thanks again Dave-H. I forgot about Trend Micro's PC-cillin. I suddenly started having problems with Avast! recently and I've been debating what to do. Fix-It Utilities includes a version of that antivirus and I believe they're still updating the definitions.

UPDATE: Well I spoke too soon. It appears that they've discontinued updating the definitions as of December 2009. Maybe there's a way to update the definitions from Trend Micro. I'll have to check into that.

Edited by Prozactive
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dave-H,

Which pattern file update do you use to update your version of Trend Micro PC-cillin? I took a look at Trend Micro's pattern updates and they list about 2 dozen different files. I suspect the Consumer OPR pattern file is the correct one to use for the version of PC-cillin included in Fix-It Utilities but I'm not sure.

Edited by Prozactive
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dave-H,

Which pattern file update do you use to update your version of Trend Micro PC-cillin? I took a look at Trend Micro's pattern updates and they list about 2 dozen different files. I suspect the Consumer OPR pattern file is the correct one to use for the version of PC-cillin included in Fix-It Utilities but I'm not sure.

Yes, that's what I use, from here.

There's been a bit of confusion over the pattern files recently, as about a month ago the Trend download page completely changed.

It used to offer just the one file but now there are lots there!

Also, the "Consumer OPR" files suddenly became at least double the size that they were before, with no explanation!

They do work, but for the last couple of weeks I've tried using the "Malware OPR - Windows" file. This is more the size that it used to be, and still works.

The zip files of the two versions actually appear to contain the same "lpt$vpn.xxx" file, just one is twice the size of the other!

Very strange.

:)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dave-H,

Thanks again for the excellent info. I didn't realize the Trend Micro download page had recently changed but it's quite confusing. I did note the very large size of the "Consumer OPR" pattern file (almost 80MB!).

I'm glad you confirmed the lpt$vpn.xxx file names within the pattern updates. The last definitions update provided by VCOM (now Avanquest) for Fix-It Utilities contained a large file with that name format. I'm fairly certain I will be able to update their version of PC-cillin with the latest pattern file from Trend Micro. Like you said, the "Malware OPR - Windows" version of the pattern file is more in the size range of the update file provided by VCOM.

I'm still working on resolving my Avast! antivirus problems but it's nice to know I have an alternative when their support for Win9x/ME runs out (or earlier if I can't resolve the problems).

Edited by Prozactive
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I still use Trend PC-cillin 2002 (version 9.06) on my dual boot (98SE/XP) machine, and it still works fine.

I haven't had automatic virus pattern updates for years, but I download and install the latest pattern files from Trend's site manually and they still install and work fine.

I don't know how much longer for of course!

:)

Old versions of PC-cillin can be downloaded from

http://www.trendmicro.com/Download/legacy.asp

Later versions than 2002 are available.

Would it be best to use PC-cillin 2005? Or is 2002 the best?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Old versions of PC-cillin can be downloaded from

http://www.trendmicro.com/Download/legacy.asp

Later versions than 2002 are available.

Would it be best to use PC-cillin 2005? Or is 2002 the best?

I was aware that there are later versions of PC-cillin that support Windows 98, I assume PC-cillin 2005 is the last one that does.

I haven't tried any later versions simply because I don't have licences for them!

I'm pretty sure that upgrades from 2002 to later versions were not free.

Whether you can actually buy a licence now for any version I would doubt.

2002 seems to still work fine and I don't know what later versions might provide that would make attempting an upgrade worthwhile.

:)

Edited by Dave-H
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Old versions of PC-cillin can be downloaded from

http://www.trendmicro.com/Download/legacy.asp

Later versions than 2002 are available.

Would it be best to use PC-cillin 2005? Or is 2002 the best?

I was aware that there are later versions of PC-cillin that support Windows 98, I assume PC-cillin 2005 is the last one that does.

I haven't tried any later versions simply because I don't have licences for them! <snip>

:)

Thanks.

Which Spyware Pattern do you use?

I don't know what CPR, DCT and OPR mean.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Old versions of PC-cillin can be downloaded from

http://www.trendmicro.com/Download/legacy.asp

Later versions than 2002 are available.

Would it be best to use PC-cillin 2005? Or is 2002 the best?

I was aware that there are later versions of PC-cillin that support Windows 98, I assume PC-cillin 2005 is the last one that does.

I haven't tried any later versions simply because I don't have licences for them! <snip>

:)

Thanks.

Which Spyware Pattern do you use?

I don't know what CPR, DCT and OPR mean.

CPR means Controlled Pattern Release.

OPR means Official Pattern Release.

Not sure about DCT!

CPRs are released in between OPRs for those who always want the very latest all the time.

I only ever bother with the OPRs.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...