Drive Sentry

This is a good product. But stay away unless you know what you are doing and have larger than average resources. It is a learning type system so early on you have to answer a lot of questions - like should I allow this or not? If you are a newbie or lamer - stay clear.

Having said all that, this is a very clean app which has never gotten much press. It does a GREAT job. It is almost like a firewall/malware combo - actually it is HIPS. And as HIPS systems go, it is one of the best.

If you are a power user, which I think most of us here are, check it out.

it's true that it's not light on system resource (30 to 45 Mb peak mem usage on my system: Vista Business SP1, 2Gb) BUT you have to keep in mind the following:

1) it's a FREE product

2) its detection engine is quite efficient (on my system it reported keylogger PSWTool.Win32.Asterisk.a as riskware - ESET didnt)

3) it is very stable and doesn't crash or bloat your system, contrary to other HIPS solutions (Threatfire for instance)

I think it's very useful as an added layer of protection, and if you have a fast computer, you will not notice it.

Its a good idea with poor execution. Took up way too much memory on a laptop running Windows Vista Basic with 2GB of ram! Nevertheless it has a nice interface and the idea of integrating community responses is a nice one. I just wish it didn't keep requesting to check for database updates and tell me I didn't need an update about a minute later. All in all not a keeper till it becomes more polished for everyday use!