KIS 2009 Review Part 1

I think its probably time to give you some idea of what i think of KIS 2009. This will be part one of several, not sure how many yet, but I'll try and keep them reasonably condensed.

Installation

Could have been easier, lets put it that way. I don't honestly believe Kaspersky intended it to be quite as difficult as i made it but still...

Started off quite promisingly, uninstalled Nod32 and Comodo Firewall, did the normal reboot that is required when you do that sort of thing, and then all hell broke loose.
Windows arrived back on the screen and immediately i knew something was amiss as i got a huge pop-up "Your System is INFECTED!". Blimey, just a minute, let me get a cup of tea and a biscuit and you can fill me in on the details.

In the four seconds it took me to launch the Kaspersky installer, i had been infested with something called MicroAV. Annoying little bastard it is too, pops up every time you try to do anything, which hampers trying to install the software to get rid of the thing. I even tried to do it in safe mode, but as installations of software can only occur in 'proper mode' according to the vista message i got, that didn't help me much.

Finally managed to get Kaspersky installed and it went a bit downhill again then. Having installed it and restarted (again) it duly informs me that its not activated and needs doing. No problem, i have me key handy, so i click on Activate Now and wait....and wait....oh...its crashed. That's handy then. Try again...nope crashed again...repeat ad nausem...

I then had to become slightly counter productive, and uninstall the program that should have cleaned my system up, restart and install it again. It then occurred to me that when i installed the first time, i had disabled the internet to try and avoid a massive spyware invasion. The second time i left it connected and hoped for the best. Turns out this was a very good idea as the installer told me there was an updated version of Kaspersky and did i want it, much clicking of yes and it downloaded a 37meg update which actually activated and worked properly.

Turns out however that KIS 2009 is more prevention than cure, as trying to conduct a scan that would remove the infections whilst it was sorting out the firewall and working out which programs were safe and which weren't is quite hard. I dare say it would have removed the infections, but i was that pissed off with pop-ups by this stage that i just downloaded other spyware removal software that i know works, removed what bits i could, and sorted the system out that way.

Once i had removed the obvious stuff and got a computer that worked properly, i did conduct a full system scan, and it did find some stuff hidden away in temp directory's and other places and removed them. Whether it has caught the lot i don't know, but everything seems fine up to now.

And now we arrive here, everything is installed, everything is working and the system is ticking along as it should. So what do we draw from this early foray into KIS? Once installed it seems good, if my system was clean, I'm sure the install would have been smooth and painless, but alas. Based on that though, so far I'm quietly impressed, time will tell if i remain so...