Officeware Workstation

 Type of Program: Anti-Virus
Supported Platforms: Windows 95/98/2000/ME/XP
Company Name: Seventh Knight
Version:
Price: $29.95
Installed Size: 4.5mb

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 Here's a security application that really secures. What it does is checks (makes system calls at the Windows Kernel level) when anything requests processor time. Once it does so it then checks that system call against an encrypted database of "approved" executables. Now, if what it needs to find is not in that database for that particular executable the user than has the option to either "run" it, or not to "run" that program. In this way, Officeware Workstation is supposed to prevent "viruses" or malicious programs from attacking your system. It also in these attempts to check the database stops any "unauthorized" software from being installed, or run. As a note, when I ran several other programs (executables) it never did acknowledge whether I could run it or not nor give me any choices.

This is all well in itself (the theory sounds good), but in my experience in using it on a Windows 2000 system was not very good. This particular program in my own experience (which may not reflect your own) was that in changed my Windows Explorer Folder Options completely, I could not open my Registry (it continuously kept placing the .EXE in my "Root DIR" as a 1KB file when it should have been elsewhere as a 70KB file! It slowed my overall system performance down, and generally did some really "weird" things to my computer, especially to another program that I run quite often and was already installed prior to installing this program. At one point I thought I’d have to do the unthinkable and reformat, but luckily after an hour off prodding here and there I was able to get back to normal operations.

Overall this program is good in principle but still has some bugs to work out (at least when using on a single home PC). This product probably may work better in an actual office environment, monitoring numerous workstations, keeping users out of restricted files, etc. as it really does stop possible malicious programs (or others) from running as their Forums suggest.

Performance
User Friendly
Cost
Ease of Installation
Support
Reviewed by R. Hall
Purchases can be made via their Web site. 

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