Is Allchin right or plain crazy on the Vista anti-virus issue? Here's my story

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Saturday, 11 November 2006 15:26

Your IT - Entertainment

Jim Allchin's son ran Vista without anti-virus. But I’ve run XP without anti-virus for months earlier this year, and I didn’t get infected. Why did I do it, and why no infections?

It seems like a world gone mad. There I was advising Mac users to run Internet Security software (including a firewall and anti-virus) just recently (and being slammed for doing so), but the funny thing is that I went for a few months early this year without anti-virus software on my XP system with no ill effects, although my firewall and anti-spyware software was definitely switched on and in full effect. Am I mad too?

Well, while some Mac websites definitely think so, there’s a reason why I decided to run my system without anti-virus for a time.

Something screwed my anti-virus software up – it was the free AVG at the time, and it didn’t matter whether I uninstalled it, re-installed it or tried using a different anti-virus program – I just couldn’t get the anti-virus to work or update itself. Something was stuck, and it was a weird one, and there appeared to be no ill-effects to the rest of my system.

From memory, I tried doing a system restore, but for whatever reason it didn’t work. Faced with the need to do work every day, and re-install my system (which would take time), I had a choice. Take the re-installation plunge, or try an experiment seemingly only possibly on a Mac – run my system without anti-virus.

Now let’s make something very clear. Anti-virus, and Internet Security software (which generally means a firewall, anti-virus, anti-spyware and other protective software) is very important, and you should run it – PC, Mac, Linux or whatever it is you’re running.

I’m certainly running such an Internet Security program now on my Vista installation – the beta version of Trend Micro PC-Cillin that’s been specifically designed to work with Vista RC1.

But when I was using my XP system, with a firewall switched on, and all the virus protection measures built-in to Outlook to stop your standard mass mailing viruses/worms, and the spyware protection inside of IE6 SP2, along with still regular use of anti-spyware programs such as Windows Defender (in beta at the time), SpyBot and AdAware, and no running anti-virus software, I didn’t get infected. Not once.

Indeed, I haven’t been infected by a virus for years – not since (from memory) the Melissa virus from years ago, when an email popped into my inbox from a very, very trusted friend. The email said ‘take a look at this’. Foolishly, I did, and despite having anti-virus on my system at the time, this particular virus hadn’t yet made it into the anti-virus definitions of the particular anti-virus program I was using at the time.

So what happened next? Read on to find out...