Antimalware, firewall, and other security programs for Windows XP working in 2023 and hopefully beyond

[George King]

On 9/22/2024 at 10:23 PM, AstroSkipper said:

Here is a review of Huorong Internet Security v6: 
https://malwaretips.com/threads/huorong-internet-security-v6-finale.132002/ 
And the test results are rather disastrous.  There is still a lot of room for improvement.  So I can't agree with your assessment. 

Interesting, hope they are working on it.

Edited September 24, 2024 by George King

[genieautravail]

Some years ago, I have played with Huorong Internet Security.

First time I heard about it was on the Wilders Security Forums.

Quickly installed and quickly uninstalled...

Regards

[genieautravail]

For whose interested, here the the link to the thread on the Wilders Security Forums:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/huorong-internet-security-something-new-on-market.415971/

Regards

[genieautravail]

On 7/14/2024 at 3:22 PM, AstroSkipper said:

Are there other installer versions available from your source? There is one other version I am also interested in, It is the file cispremium_only_installer.exe in the version 10.2.0.6514. Only if it doesn’t cause any trouble, of course.  And only if you are not at work. 

@AstroSkipper

About Comodo Internet Security 10.2.0.6514.

I have missed this one from my source:

https://ufile.io/ag9ppyqe

Regards

Edited September 25, 2024 by genieautravail

[AstroSkipper]

25 minutes ago, genieautravail said:

@AstroSkipper

About Comodo Internet Security 10.2.0.6514.

I have missed this one from my source:

https://ufile.io/ag9ppyqe

Regards

Thanks for the upload!

[Multibooter]

"Kaspersky AV software uninstalls itself and mounts UltraAV in its place" "Kaspersky replaced with UltraAV in the US"

https://software.informer.com/Stories/kaspersky-replaced-with-ultraav-in-the-us.html

My ancient version of Kaspersky still updates OK:

 

 

 

Edited September 29, 2024 by Multibooter

[dmiranda]

On 9/21/2024 at 11:51 AM, AstroSkipper said:

@dmiranda I have listed Trend Micro Sysclean first of all in the third post of this thread: 
https://msfn.org/board/topic/184730-antimalware-firewall-and-other-security-programs-for-windows-xp-working-in-2023-and-hopefully-beyond/?do=findComment&comment=1244366

 

Cool. I edited the post consolidating information I gathered as I was testing. Cheers!

[Zorba the Geek]

I see Malwarebytes Antimalware Premium v3.5.1 is on the list of working antimalware, firewall, and other security programs for Windows XP, but updates for this product ended on 8th August 2024.  I was hoping to get two years out of it, so I am disappointed. 

[Zorba the Geek]

I wish to draw the XP community's attention to some really odd XP compatible anti malware solutions developed by enthusiasts called ROSE SWE Security and Antivirus.

Here is a list of the scanners that they currently offer.  Most of them are currently under development  and have been updated in October and November of this year:

• VirScan Plus for DOS
• RHBVS - ROSE SWE's Heuristic Based Virus Scanner for DOS and Windows
• RMS (formerly known as F_MIRC) - Portable Virus Scanner for DOS16/32, Win32/64, WSL2, Linux32/64
• Mr2S - Mister Double Scan (discontinued) for DOS
• AntiLink  for DOS and Win32
• MemScan - Memory Virus Scanner for DOS
• ROSE SWE Virus Collector Toolset

I would be interested in reading the opinion of Astroskipper and other XP enthusiasts on these strange applications.

Edited December 7, 2024 by Zorba the Geek
Forgot to include URL

[Dave-H]

1 hour ago, Zorba the Geek said:

I see Malwarebytes Antimalware Premium v3.5.1 is on the list of working antimalware, firewall, and other security programs for Windows XP, but updates for this product ended on 8th August 2024.  I was hoping to get two years out of it, so I am disappointed. 

Yes, I was sad when Malwarebytes finally dropped pattern updates for 3.5.1, although to be fair they did keep them going for a number of years longer than I thought they would.
I was a bit annoyed though, like everyone else, when they suddenly stopped them with no notice at all!
I'm still using it, but obviously as time goes on, using it with an out of date pattern will become more and more risky.

[FranceBB]

I'm a bit late, but a new post popped up in the Avast Forum saying that as of October 1st 2024, they're no longer gonna test updates on Windows XP. As you probably know, the last version of Avast to run on Windows XP is version 18.8, however that one has been receiving not only definitions updates to update the various detections but also occasional patches when new security flaws were identified in the internal modules/components. Up until October 2024, Avast tested all those updates on every version of Windows starting from Windows XP upwards, however they're no longer gonna do that. This means that they're still gonna release definition updates and eventual security updates for version 18.8, but nobody from the Avast team will test them on XP, so they might or might not work and they're gonna rely on user feedbacks for this. To be fair, I'm a bit surprised to see such an announcement given that version 18 from 2018 is supposed to be supported for 10 years like other versions of Avast, so until the end of 2027 and it's the last x86 version before they moved to x64, so I thought they were still gonna continue testing up until the end of support. On the other hand, I do understand that resources and time are limited, so as long as they're still gonna push updates and they're gonna listen to user feedback, I'm "fine" with that. I also appreciate the openness about this as they clearly stated that they're not gonna have XP machines to test this, rather than just rolling out updates and saying "sorry" afterwards like what some other companies have done. We'll see what the future holds, but for now I haven't noticed any issue / incompatibility in any of the last updates. So far so good. What I can say, however, is that if you're using Avast and if you notice anything unusual on your XP, please reach out to the support team so that they can fix it, 'cause unfortunately they're no longer testing it. 

[Zorba the Geek]

I have just installed Glarysoft's Malware Hunter and bought a license, and I must say this is one of the most basic AV applications out there.  All it does is real time and on-demand scanning using definitions.  No scanning of boot sectors, no heuristics or HIPs, and no anti ransomware.  At $26 dollars for a years subscription it is half the price of ESET NOD32 AV, but RogueKiller is only an incredible $15 and it has more features.  In it's favour it only consumes 79.3 MB on your hard drive once you remove the language files, but memory usage of MalwareHunter.exe is a whopping 152.468 MB

[AstroSkipper]

On 12/26/2024 at 11:08 PM, Zorba the Geek said:

I have just installed Glarysoft's Malware Hunter and bought a license, and I must say this is one of the most basic AV applications out there.  All it does is real time and on-demand scanning using definitions.  No scanning of boot sectors, no heuristics or HIPs, and no anti ransomware.  At $26 dollars for a years subscription it is half the price of ESET NOD32 AV, but RogueKiller is only an incredible $15 and it has more features.  In it's favour it only consumes 79.3 MB on your hard drive once you remove the language files, but memory usage of MalwareHunter.exe is a whopping 152.468 MB

If you are prepared to pay for an antimalware programme, I would have bought a RogueKiller licence. Glarysoft's Malware Hunter doesn't have many features, and I would rank it far behind RogueKiller. But to each their own.

[Multibooter]

The scan engine of my ancient version of Kaspersky, running under WinXP, canNOT look into all .exe files. In my experience this occurs with about 2-5% of .exe files checked.

When Kaspersky cannot look into [=open, extract] a .exe, the "scanned" column of the "Statistics" tab indicates "1", as with the file hmpalert.exe in the screenshot below.
So the Kaspersky msg "No threats detected" has to be treated with caution if "1" is displayed in the "Scanned" column, which indicates that the file should be examined further.
In contrast, the file 'torbrowser-install-7.5.6_en-US.exe', shown in the screenshot below, could be checked OK by Kaspersky, with 7053 files in it checked by Kaspersky. BTW, 'torbrowser-install-7.5.6_en-US.exe'  is the last version which runs OK under WinXP (also under SSE-only = Pentium 3), and is VERY useful for accessing sites blocked by ISPs etc.

 

hmpalert.exe is a modified HitmanPro.Alert 3.8.25 Build 965, from a dubious source. Neither Universal Extractor v1.6.1.2035 (koros mod, 13Dec2018) nor 7-Zip v21.06 (24Nov2021) could extract hmpalert.exe properly, extracting only \.rsrc\ etc.

When hmpalert.exe was installed under WinXP in a sandbox of Sandboxie v5.40, the installation completed OK, extracting 25 files and folders. but did not run in a sandbox because a service was not loaded.

A 2nd scan with my ancient version of Kaspersky checked OK the 25 files, installed/extracted into the sandbox (see screenshot).

hmpalert.exe was used here just as an example for showing how to virus-check a file which cannot be opened by the virus-checker. This sandbox trick probably also works with other virus-checkers, provided that the virus-checker indicates whether or not it can look into a file.

BTW, hmpalert.exe seems to install OK under WinXP SP3, but no idea whether it runs OK under WinXP or whether it is of any use.

 

Edited January 3 by Multibooter

[modnar]

I have used Avast since I long ago and AVG before that and Comodo in-between. Two days ago (2025-01-08) on my XPuSP4 (Harkaz) I have noticed AvastSVC using 1/3 of 1 core of my CPU (~8%) and forcing csrss service use the other 2/3 of 1 core (~17%), so I tried disabling updates (didn't work), reinstalling - worked for 1 day, the next day again heating the CPU. Interesting is that it does not do this on all XP machines (thankfully).

I have no solution - only today I've found out about Avast team's stopping testing for WinXP, so for now I've installed 18.8 version of AVG (I have offline installation for both). We shall see how it works tomorrow.

Update: looks like it will happen on all XP machines rather sooner than laterish - I have just had to uninstall Avast from another PC - here since it's a dual core, 50% CPU usage for nothing (~12% avastsvc and ~38% csrss service). :-(

Update from AVG tomorrow: same problem; so I uninstalled it and installed Panda Free. Lightweight and works.

Edited January 11 by modnar