Customer Reviews

Panda Titanium AntiVirus 2005

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

Worse antivirus software I've ever used. No hyperbole. I'm a long-time user of McAfee and decided to see if this could beat McAfee. On my system McAfee 9 usually takes about an hour to scan my 80-GB drive. Panda was running for over 4 hours before I figured out it was either looping or froze. Shut it off and rebooted. Figured if the thing messed up after one time, it wasn't worth the investment. So I went to uninstall and forget it. This thing wouldn't uninstall. I even tried specialized software made for uninstalling applications. Nothing worked. The Panda site was worthless in having anything in support to get rid of it. And now, I couldn't reinstall McAfee because it would conflict with Panda, and on top of that, every time I rebooted or tuned on the computer, there's this annoying picture of a Panda on the side of the Widow's splash screen. I did a Google search and found others with the same problem. One wound up reformatting his drive just to get rid of it. Then I tripped over some forum and found something from some guy who contacted Panda, paid them and got the supposed solution, which included a procedure of installing to small files, extracting one, going to safe mode, then the registry, then back to the desktop, into Windows Explorer to delete more files. And all the while I'm asking myself why didn't they just put in a working uninstaller with the program. Even kid games come with uninstallers. Only thing I could come up with is it was made to give you such a headache that you'd gladly pay the $29 tech support to try and get rid of it.

Well, they're procedure didn't work and next thing you know, I couldn't access the Net through my DSL. And there I was on the phone with Verizon then Linksys for a combined 2 hours and still unable to fix it. All in all, it was a weekend of pain thanks to Panda's junk.

Well good news. I long ago installed a second hard drive for backup purposes and use Acronis TrueImage. If you don't own TrueImage, buy it. It'll save your life; and no, I don't work for the company, just happen to love the product. I do a weekly image backup and fortunately the most recent backup I had was less than 3 days before I installed that Panda junk. I used to use Norton Ghost, but I don't find any of Norton's software of value anymore and they also will drain you in tech support fees. Besides, Acronis makes restoring a backup a breeze. An hour later my backup's restored and all is back to normal and I didn't have to reinstall Windows and go through the hassle of putting in all the divers and the whole nine yards that goes with it.

Avoid Panda like the plague. I'd rather use that free AVG antivirus, which I've heard is far superior and can actually be uninstalled without crippling your system.

I bought this Panda product after it was recommended by a computer supply store. I had always had McAfee, and was very happy with it, but they said it would catch more. I received the product from the download, and ran it. It caught one or two things, but didn't get as much as I thought it would. After that, all my problems started. My computer began to get very very slow, especially in startup, but also during normal operation (and I have a very good computer with a very fast processor, video card, and tons of memory). I checked the programs running, and there were about 3 AV programs (all from panda) that were using a huge amount of processing power. Then suddenly, a "drwtsn32" file appeared, which I later learned is Window's error logger, so if you get a system error, you can see what caused it. I opened up my drwtsn file and sure enough, Panda was listed numerous times. I then started a dialogue with Panda letting them know that I was getting this error, and my computer was very slow, and they asked me about my previous Antivirus. I told them it was McAfee, and they told me I didn't uninstall it completely. I assured them I did (since I went thought the McAfee website to make sure it was completely uninstalled), and they seemed to forget what my question was, and asked me to tell them my error again. This whole process has taken about a week, and I am still waiting for their response. If only they could refund my money so I could go back to McAfee! What a huge mistake this was! I'm warning you, go with Norton or McAfee, don't waste your money on a product that provides poor customer support, and slows down your computer!

Panda might do a good job of catching viruses but their customer service sucks. You get a limited time of support . . . free for 3 minutes and then 20 bucks after that. They they cut you off and it is all pay over the phone. They don't have a toll free number so they are charging you while you wait in que- at times very long waits exist. Dealing with their support on line is even worse. Not very logical web site for tech support and before you get anywhere you must first fill out lots of forms and then hope for a reply.
They boast of daily updates but many days you don't need this, so why tie up your resources?! I'm asking for my money back!
So if you have any installation problems like I did, expect a large investment of your time and possibly your money.

I installed the panda antivirus software 2005. My broadband connection goes through the firewall. Panda always messes up messaging through firewall based routers. I can't get to internet after that. I uninstalled and now even I can't get through internet. I personally don't recommend anyone to use panda software and get tangled into problems and top of that you have to pay tech support to ressolve any issues. I will probably go with pc-cillin anti virus.

Panda 2005 may have a good detection track record, but it will slow your startup and shutdown to a crawl. On three freshly formatted and installed Windows XP systems (that is, aside from the windows update patches, Panda is the only program installed), the bootup time after Panda was installed increased by anywhere between 30 seconds to 2 minutes. Also, every once in a while the protection would become disabled, requiring yet another reboot.

Please, save your money and get something like NOD32 or even Norton.

I lived with Panda 2005 randomly pinning my CPU usage at 100% for several minutes at a time mostly because it was impossible to obtain a response from tech support.

In a last ditch effort to keep things running I upgraded to 2006, on-line upgrades stopped after two days and as I could not obtain tech support, I just gave up on the product.

My own fault, I guess, for throwing good money after bad - perhaps you can avoid doing the same.

This product is HORRID! I loaded it, and my internet connection was shut off by it, and none of the 'trditional' way of getting it started worked. I called Panda, Microsoft (who couldnt help, as it was 3rd party software that caused my problems), Panda again, and nothing from anyone. Horrible customer service, Horrible product.
Buyer Beware!!
You are hereby warned!

DO NOT BUY THIS AWFUL PROGRAM!!!
Norton is the way to go...FOR SURE!!!

I am very happy with this product. It is running on an XP Home operating system and all is well. It is important to completely remove any existing antivirus product before installing this one. When I sent e-mail to tech support they responded within 24 hours.

I bought 2 copies of Panda Platinum Internet Security in Nov. 2004. I was told I needed a 2 separate install discs for myself and my son's computer. It was expensive but I was told it was the best anti-virus software on the market. Apparently PC World said the same thing in a recent review.

Things went well till 3 months ago when the anti-virus no longer worked on either computer. It kept saying it couldn't find a file. We re-installed both discs and I got mine working for a little while but all of a sudden I couldn't FTP with Dreamweaver anymore - a huge problem as I do Web Sites part-time. I added dreamweaver.exe to the permitted files but it still blocked all FTP attempts. Then the anti-virus failed again on my computer. It never did work again on my son's despite 2 re-installs.
I can't even list all my attempts to get help from the supposed "24 hour tech help". What a joke that is. I even called long distance, on my dime, to some number in Europe and to a central office in Canada and got nowhere. All one gets is an automated voicemail and it's useless. I was E-mailing on an almost daily basis and got NO reply at all. Worst technical help doesn't even begin to cover it. In the meantime the software was up for renewal but I didn't want to renew it if I couldn't get it working - not at $140 dollars for 2 licenses! Even worse, after the renewal deadline came and went, I could no longer close the program from the little Panda figure on my task bar and thus could no longer FTP anything. I had to uninstall Panda to FTP - so currently have no protection.

I was thinking of switching to only the anti-virus program but after reading these reviews I don't think I want to bother with Panda at all anymore. I'm VERY worried now however, that I'll have the same problems trying to install a new product as other users have had. I simply don't have time to reformat 2 hard drives to get rid of Panda. This is a nightmare!

I started with Panda 6 years ago. It was a great product. It has gone progressively downhill.

I upgraded 2004 to 2005 and bought three years because I really rate it as an antivirus engine. However, 2005 did not work at all with my Sygate firewall. So I uninstalled Sygate (an excellent product) and used Panda's firewall. I also installed SpamPal (another excellent product) as a Spam filter. My e-mail choked. I mailed Panda support and had six responses all asking me to do things which I did and sent them screenshots and reports which they promptly lost. Tried to uninstall Panda 2005 and found I could not connect to the internet. It had modified various configurations on my system and one of these is socket services.(Without the Panda product installed nothing can connect to the internet.) Tried to reinstall it so I could get my mail and it said I was installing an earlier version over a later version (the existing one had been updated online, so it wouldn't let me. Tried manually removing it. Hours of scrubbing registry and finding unremovable directories and programs... Finally removed enough of it so it would allow 2005 to re-install, so I could then cleanly uninstall it. Got it off and installed evaluation version of 2006. Couldn't connect to the internet because it couldn't repair the socket damage done by its predecessor. Decided to uninstall it; uninstall failed. Now I have no virus protection, no internet access, and cannot install or uninstall the product. Tech support meanwhile was hopeless and it was obvious there was a language problem, and the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing. I got more help off the internet than the help I have paid for from Panda. Eventually, I managed to uninstall 2006 and get 2005 back so I could access the internet.I HAVE to run 2005 because if I remove it my internet access fails...

I'll be buying a new machine in a few months and I will install AVG on it. I would strongly recommend that NOBODY install Panda until they (Panda) get their act together and write a proper uninstall. Personally I would never use their products again.