azslow3
I normally have no viruses... But recently I have browsed my old archive, and I have noticed that "something" was "awaken"... I have found one beast manually, packed it into archive and tried to detect it using antiviruses.
Windows Defender from 8.1 and the latest Avira was not able to recognize it even as potentially dangerous. But g-data has immediately spotted it. At our University, after switch to Windows 8, we have thought we are reasonably safe by default. The same was for me with Avira. Really disappointed...

Best practice is to run multiple scans with different tools and preferably in Safe Mode (because sometimes the virus code dudes will put something in there that disables the AV or hides itself or something and in Safe Mode NOTHING is allowed to start except the essentials and whatever you execute). When I think I've got something weird going on I'll scan with my regular AV then follow that up with a Malwarebytes scan and a Spybot Search and Destroy scan. Then I might even run HiJackThis to see if there is anything weird going on but I'm not really smart enough to read those darned logs. Still it is the most thorough one of the bunch because it logs EVERYTHING your computer is doing and will give you a general description of what's normal, what's unnecessary and what could possibly be a threat BUT none of it is definitive AND if you delete something you could be deleting something your computer actually needs.
 
When I wipe this system and install a clean copy of Windows what I'm going to do is get the system set up with everything I'm likely to use then run HiJackThis and save the log. Then I can compare that to any future logs to see if any new stuff starts running for no reason. That way I can delete stuff if it looks weird without worrying it's gonna screwup my system. If it does then I can just do a system restore or wipe anyway but unless it's a new and needed Windows thing then it should be fine.
 
Also CCleaner while not an AV is another nice tool to have to clean up crap that can be clogging up a system.

To the OP.....
 
I find that the first time I open SONAR after a reboot... it takes a long time..... if I quit SONAR and restart it without a reboot, it loads in less than half the time as compared to after the reboot.  The behavior you described may be related to this and not have MSE turned off.
 
I think the reason it loads faster after the initial load has to do with stuff already cached thus avoiding as many hard drive reads to load it up.
 
Just my thoughts and experience.
 
Jim

jkleban
To the OP.....
 
I find that the first time I open SONAR after a reboot... it takes a long time..... if I quit SONAR and restart it without a reboot, it loads in less than half the time as compared to after the reboot.  The behavior you described may be related to this and not have MSE turned off.
 
I think the reason it loads faster after the initial load has to do with stuff already cached thus avoiding as many hard drive reads to load it up.
 
Just my thoughts and experience.
 
Jim

This is true as well but in my case it seems to be the VST scan. Right now after disabling MSE the VST scan takes a few seconds then the next time I reopen Sonar it's pretty much instantaneous. When I had MSE turned on it would take waaaaay longer. Like ten seconds just for the first VST scan and sometimes more.
 
However my whiteouts were occurring when I went to load my project. I'd generally wait for the VST scan to complete then open my project and then the whiteout would occur and it would take generally take about 5-10 seconds (but sometimes longer) for the project to load.
 
Now with MSE off upon boot up it takes at most 3-5 seconds for the VST scan (usually less) then about 2-4 seconds or so to load the project (and it is a pretty large project with LOTS of audio/MIDI clips). After that (without rebooting) the VST scan is instantaneous and the project usually loads in 2 seconds. In both cases there is absolutely no whiteouts whereas before there was ALWAYS a whiteout. It wasn't always a "full" whiteout though. The QuickStart dialog would go white (yes I still use the QuickStart because I find it handy) and the borders of the Sonar window would go white and say "Not Responding".
 
It was definitely being scanned. Not a big deal because it didn't interfere with my work as far as I could tell but crashes or weirdness while I'm working makes me REALLY angry. Kind of like when people messed with me on stage. Dangerous business. I'm tryin' work up here!!! lol
 
Funny story... I was playing a rather large one off gig out of town and some drunk kid was rolling around on the stage all over my pedals making them turn on/off, screwing up the setting, making patch cable noise into the PA, etc. I told him like three times to cut it out and even told his girlfriend to get him off the stage or he was gonna get smacked around. Well he did it again so I started wailing on him. My bandmates pulled me off and the kid scurried off into the crowd.
 
Like a year later some guy comes up to me on the street and says "Hey! It's you! THE ANGRIEST GUITAR PLAYER ON THE PLANET!!" and kept on walking. Took me a minute but I'm pretty sure it was that kid. lol
 
It may have been one of the other dummies I manhandled for messing with me on stage though. There were so many.

CakeAlexS
I've recently become extremely impressed with the latest version of malwarebytes. I had to clean up a friends machine recently and it was the only scanner that worked well, and now they do real time scanning.

 

Beepster
Now THAT is interesting. So they've basically when from an alternate scanning tool to being a full blown AV? Because yeah... MWB has always been really good... it just wasn't a substitute for a regular AV.
 
hmmm...

I just bought a very cheap lifetime premium license here for $19. Seems to be a very cheap deal and lifetime licenses will cease to exist very soon indeed.
 
There is also a 14 day trial available.
 
(Usual advice, if you try it out you need to cleanly uninstall any other virus scanner before installation).
 
Good riddance ZoneAlarm!

Actually I might be misleading people here.
Malware Bytes is STILL only designed to compliment a virus scanner, not replace it even with realtime scanning.

Full info here.
https://forums.malwarebyt...x.php?showtopic=150221
 
Hello ZoneAlarm ...

Beepster, 
 
Why are you doing a VST scan each time you load SONAR?  Are you adding and removing all kinds of VSTs often?
 
I only do a manual scan whenever I add or update a VST and turn off the SCAN upon startup option.  Adds too much time to get going for me.
 
Jim
 
PS - I don't think I have MSE turned on but now that you brought this to my attention, I will check.  I only connect to the NET when I update software from my DAW.

Just get defender or whatever to exclude the files/folders. Your plugin folder if you like.
You really don't need to turn it off your antivirus unless you are running an antique PC, you just need to configure it  (#6).
I leave my plugin settings at manual scan as well. Quicker startup that way.
 
Ta...
 

jkleban
Beepster, 
 
Why are you doing a VST scan each time you load SONAR?  Are you adding and removing all kinds of VSTs often?
 
I only do a manual scan whenever I add or update a VST and turn off the SCAN upon startup option.  Adds too much time to get going for me.
 
Jim
 
PS - I don't think I have MSE turned on but now that you brought this to my attention, I will check.  I only connect to the NET when I update software from my DAW.

IDK... it's always just done that so I'm assuming the Scanner is set to automatically do it on startup. It doesn't bother me because and takes very little time (if any at all) and honestly I kind of prefer it that way so if I add another plug in (which rarely happens because I'm broke/cheap but does happen occasionally) it just gets found instead of me having to poke around the VST Preferences.
 
As far as excluding folders I'm sure that would help with the startup issue but MSE is likely still doing stuff in the background (like checking for updates or its own status). My projects tend to get big and I try a lot of weird stuff that probably isn't normal usage of the program so I just prefer not to risk having a project get corrupted or clicks/pops occurring that I may not notice until I start mixing (gawd I hate when that happens). Also there are certain tasks I perform that need the computer's full attention because they are kind of flaky at the best of times. *cough* audiosnap *cough*
 
;-p

I've never turned MSE off and I haven't seen it cause any problems in the way of corruption or clicks and pops. I have all of my Sonar and project folders excluded from protection though. Realistically there's all sorts of stuff going on in the background in Windows - if Sonar needed 100% of the CPU then it just wouldn't work at all. 

I actually don't allow Windows to do much of anything in the background wherever possible (optimized system even though I probably have enough power to not need that). I haven't had any real problems with X3 as of yet but definitely did with X2 and those problems certainly seemed to increase with MSE on.
 
Habit and paranoia I guess but as I said I REALLY hate little interruptions while I'm working. I get distracted enough by things the program is actually supposed to do. Like yesterday I couldn't figure out why when I unmuted one take the previously audible take was still unmuted when I distinctly recalled (or dreamed) that doing so WOULD mute the previous take. Eventually I figured out that I could just use the Smart Tool and click in the bottom half of a clip for this function BUT I wasted about 15 minutes screwing around with that, nearly posted a thread, had a smoke, looked at some other threads and just generally got off track for about an hour. When I get crashes or glitches I get way more off course and frustrated.
 
I REALLY need to get my work ethic for this stuff to be like when I had an actual job. I was just changing the strings on my guitar, one got stuck in the saddle (which happens all the time) then I had to poop, then I made a tea, then I answered a question here, looked at some news stories and posted in this thread. My guitar is still sitting on my desk waiting to be cleaned and restrung.
 
lol... I suck.