Windows 7 Antivirus Concerns for Windows 7 RC: Protecting Vista and Safe Browsing Tips

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JohnM

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I currently run Vista with Microsoft's Onecare Live for antivirus/spyware protection.

I've just installed Windows 7 RC on a separate partition, and of course Onecare Live won't work with Windows 7. Could anyone tell me (a) if I picked up a virus while using Windows 7 am I correct in thinking that this could easily infect my Vista installation and (b) if I stayed away from suspect sites and limited my e-mail use to people known to me, would the Windows 7 installation be relatively safe? I understand that by the time of the actual release of Windows 7, Microsoft will have another new free Antivirus application available - seems strange that they would release even the pre-release versions without some kind of Anti-virus software.
 
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Your vista partition is a completely seperate operating system from your windows 7 partition

the software on each partition is completely independant, meaning you can have the same application on each OS partition or different applications that do the same thing.

Its almost the same as having two computers, 1 running Vista and 1 running Win 7, they're completely independant and have nothing to do with each other.

So yes you can keep running onecare on vista and do what ever you like on your win 7 partition as they have nothing to do with each other.
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Antivirus? Use Panda, AVG or a few others

Hello, upon answering you question, there are a few Anti virus company's that have brought out Beta Anti virus software to work with Windows 7. Here is a website that will show you which programs you can use

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I myself am using the Anti virus Software from Panda, its free and in Beta, and it works quite well. Ive hit it with a few vulnerabilities and its picked them up every time, enjoy
 
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I am using Kaspersky anti virus . It is free for the life of the windows 7 Beta . Also you can ahve the entire Kaspersky internet security not just anti virus free for the life of the Beta

http://www.kaspersky.com/windows7
 
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I've been using Avast Anti Virus on Win 7 for 2 reasons

1st its free (you have to register ur details every year though) and it sits in the background and hardly bothers you

2nd it actually supports 64bit Win 7 (unlike AVG which just installs the 32Bit version of free avg in win 7)

it also has a nice screen saver mode which scans for viruses when ur screen saver is running.

I was a massive AVG fan up until recently and now I'll be recommending Avast.
 
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Using Norton 360 v3

New to this forum, installed Win7 and using my copy of Norton 360 v3 with few issues. Only problem I have found is that it won't run the Norton disk defrag.
 
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Thanks for the recommendations guys. One more question - the Windows Anti-virus page stresses that you should uninstall any other anti-virus program before installing one of the Windows 7-compatible ones - but does that apply when you've got a dual-boot system with both 7 and Vista on separate partitions? Or can I leave Onecare Live running on the Vista partition and install another one on the Windows 7 partition?
 
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Your vista partition is a completely seperate operating system from your windows 7 partition

the software on each partition is completely independant, meaning you can have the same application on each OS partition or different applications that do the same thing.

Its almost the same as having two computers, 1 running Vista and 1 running Win 7, they're completely independant and have nothing to do with each other.

So yes you can keep running onecare on vista and do what ever you like on your win 7 partition as they have nothing to do with each other.
 
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OK, thanks... but a malicious virus unleashed on the Windows 7 partition could easily, for instance, reformat or delete other partitions or otherwise cause non-recoverable damage?
 
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Well, technically yes...

If the vista partition shows up in windows 7 (which it most likely will) then a virus could technically spread to files on that partition and then infect vista when it loads up.

Or you could get a boot record virus which would prevent any drive from booting up.

If you have onecare running on vista partition and you dont have any anti virus on the windows 7 partition then your files on the vista partition could be infected and onecare would not pick this up (until you booted into vista).
 
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Thanks for confirming that for me. Having satisfied my curiousity about Windows 7, I think I'll stick with Vista until such time as the new Microsoft anti-virus software is available.
 
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