Tonight's big fight: Audiophile 2496 vs. Norton Antivirus

[MDesigner]

Has anyone else noticed problems with these two getting along? I get crashes all the time (delta.sys is the cause), but I think Norton triggers it somehow.

[Russ]

No, I\'ve never had a problem with the two. In fact, because of circuit limitations throughtout the house, I\'ve only got one computer for games, internet, and gigastudio -- and it\'s running an Audiophile, Audigy, and Norton Antivirus.

Probably just a shot in the dark, but are the drivers for AP up-to-date? I don\'t think there would be any updates for the NAV, besides viral updates, but have you checked that just in case?

[MDesigner]

NAV is totally up to date. AP I\'m not sure what drivers to use. I tried one set of drivers and got some bad crackling/popping. Tried some beta drivers and that solved the issue.

Maybe you could advise what drivers I should be using. Right now I\'m using 5.10.00.29x12 (beta). They work great except I get blue screens once in a while.

I THINK the ones I had previously were either 5.10.00.26 or 5.10.00.27, not sure.

[MartinL]

Never had any problems with those two. I was running the lastest official driver version for the Audiophile, and Norton Antivirus 2002 latest version.

[Haydn]

Make sure you\'re not running realtime scans with Norton. It is accessing the drives, using memory and slowing down the computer. I used to always disable virus scanners and network cards before starting my audio apps. Now I have separate OS and partitions for audio without any virus scanners installed and internet disabled.

[MDesigner]

Haydn

You mean disable auto-protect? That actually does the trick, I just hate turning it off. Though I\'m pretty meticulous about scanning everything I download.

Ideally, someday I\'ll have a computer entirely dedicated to audio work.. no net access (maybe just LAN), no anti-virus, nothing. And another machine for gaming and everything else images/icons/smile.gif

[Vertigo50]

My advice is to ditch Norton Antivirus altogether. EVERYtime I have ever installed a Norton product, it has slowly but steadily bogged down my system. When I uninstalled, my system would jump right up to about twice the speed. Norton products take over your system in such a way that almost every operation has to go through Norton first.

Get another antivirus program. You\'ll be glad you did. Mcafee is highly recommended.

[Russ]

Originally posted by Vertigo50:
Get another antivirus program. You\'ll be glad you did. Mcafee is highly recommended. <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">And I\'ll say the same thing about McAffe -- I think it\'s the worst program for virus protection period. I once had an entire set of edited gigasamples (over six gigs) that I had to delte, because a virus somehow breached the network, infected the gigsample drive somehow, and McAffe\'s like \"Nope! No viruses here!,\" even with the program and viral updates. When the same virus infected the music drive (mp3s, OSTs, wavs, etc.), I ditched McAffe and went with Norton\'s -- no problems since then.

Frankly, the only real reccomendation would be just turn it off while working on music, besides uninstalling the program altogether.

[Haydn]

We use McAfee on user machines where I work. I have nothing but problems with it on my one machine. I have to reinstall it about every 2-3 weeks as it keeps breaking. Never have problems with Norton on the servers I support. I use Norton on my home machines and it works great - have not had a problem in a long time.

Before killing the auto-protect make sure you kill you network connections as a safety measure and you shouldn\'t have to worry about viruses. There is always the possibility of a virus kicking off after but I these are usually caught by the auto-protect in normal circumstances.

[MDesigner]

I hear this a lot.. given, say, 100 people, about 50% will say Norton sucks, and the other 50% will say McAfee sucks images/icons/smile.gif I think in actuality, the software in both is VERY good, but the auto-protect works at such a very low level, it causes problems with other software/hardware installed. Think about it, the auto-protect feature has to catch a virus the MINUTE you even click (once) on a file... or a file is extracted from a ZIP file. That\'s at a pretty low level.

I checked some site that rates virus apps.. Norton and McAfee catch the most viruses. There are others (PC Cillin, Panda, AVG, etc) that failed several tests.. I won\'t put my data at risk like that.

Thanks for the responses, guys.

[csduke]

Originally posted by MDesigner:
I hear this a lot.. given, say, 100 people, about 50% will say Norton sucks, and the other 50% will say McAfee sucks <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">All of these products are especially invasive because they have to get in the middle of so many transactions for the reason that there are so many ways to attach a PC (sometimes the medicine is worse then the disease). Backup software that tracks the differences between now and then are also busy in the background monitoring, saving, and generally getting in the way to do their job. Such is the world of modern personal computers. The best solution is the DAWs only workstation, which you are perusing.