Free antivirus?

[DrFaroohk]

Any good free (legal!) anti virus programs out there? I've been using Avast...should I get a different one or stick with that?

[RichS]

The only others I've heard about are:

Avira Anti-Vir Personal Edition, which has been getting pretty good press of late, and

AVG 8.5 Free, which has been good but seems to have been getting bloated from version 7 on up. Haven't tried 8.5 yet - I'll have to see if they've removed some of the bloat.

[prb]

I use Avast but might UTM offered me a free copy of Symantec, but I like Avast still

[powerboy]

AVG 8.5 Free, which has been good but seems to have been getting bloated from version 7 on up. Haven't tried 8.5 yet - I'll have to see if they've removed some of the bloat.

That is the best one to use. I use it and I never got a virus yet.

[tsar]

http://www.ubuntu.com/, and you'll get rid of the virii forever.

[tamezin]

The only others I've heard about are:

Avira Anti-Vir Personal Edition, which has been getting pretty good press of late, and

AVG 8.5 Free, which has been good but seems to have been getting bloated from version 7 on up. Haven't tried 8.5 yet - I'll have to see if they've removed some of the bloat.

I like AVG. It caught a number of buggies that Norton missed.

[RichS]

I remembered another one: ClamWin Free Antivirus, which is an open-source solution. I have this as one of the Portable.apps programs on my flash drive. Haven't fully tried it, though.

I have to ask - why do you want to move from Avast? Reason is that it's my antivirus solution for my main computer and my laptop, and the only problem I've had is getting used to the clunky interface. It's very good protection, and I like the small update files (I only have access to dial-up).

[nickj6282]

This is a question I get a lot from my customers! Here's my take:

• Avast: Good stuff, nothing wrong with that
• AVG: Can make your computer a little pokey, but works well enough
• A-Squared: Works really well but doesn't do real-time scanning (you have to manually scan)
• Clamwin: Also excellent but no real-time scanning.
• Panda cloud antivirus: Is a new type of antivirus that uses something called "cloud computing" to give you real time scanning and updates. I haven't tried this one yet but have heard nothing but gushing praise for it.
• Finally, if you consider yourself advanced enough, there is Trend Micro sysclean. Be sure to read the instructions for this one very carefully, but it does do a great job of cleaning junk off a badly infected system.

Good luck!

[Slytovhand]

I used to have AVG, but it annoyed the crap out of me. Especially didn't help when my system was running badly (after doing the obvious stuff, so I figured something else was going on) and having run numerous scans on it, so I d/l'ed Avast, and bingo! First scan, it picked up about a half dozen that AVG didn't. I deleted/quaranteened, and system ran better

I avoid Nortons, at the very least because it's like IE - it gets into everything, and really slows stuff down (unless you turn it off, and then, what's the point of it?)

I'm not techie, but I'd suggest staying with Avast - esp since it's free and does a good job.

[mattm04]

I've used AVG, works good though a little bloated.

[Pagan]

I know that Kim Komando recommends running more than one anti-virus.

I've been using Comodo, AVG and Avira. I wanted to switch back to GhostWall for my firewall, but it doesn't work with Vista yet. I'm using Comodo for my firewall, too, not the one that comes on Windows.

For a while it was hard to find programs to work with 64-bit machines, but it's been getting much easier lately.

[Geek King]

I know that Kim Komando recommends running more than one anti-virus.

I believe she is talking about scanners that you set off manually. You really don't want to run more than one active (on all the time) anti-virus solution. That can cause conflict issues on your system, and eats up resources.

[CorDarei]

http://www.ubuntu.com/, and you'll get rid of the virii forever.

serious answers would be nice... why not just recommend a mac (i.e., no need to pay for antivirus)?

as far as what i use... avg and avast.... tho the "Your virus database has been updated" is a little annoying to hear almost every day.

[Pagan]

I believe she is talking about scanners that you set off manually. You really don't want to run more than one active (on all the time) anti-virus solution. That can cause conflict issues on your system, and eats up resources.

No, she does recommend running a couple concurrently. I've got AVG and Comodo running concurrently right now. I did that on my old machine and on this one and haven't had a problem yet with them bumping into each other or using up resources.

Now, if you're running more than one firewall, they *will* bump into each other. I did that once, running the Comodo firewall and forgetting to turn off the Windows firewall.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

No, she does recommend running a couple concurrently. I've got AVG and Comodo running concurrently right now. I did that on my old machine and on this one and haven't had a problem yet with them bumping into each other or using up resources.

Now, if you're running more than one firewall, they *will* bump into each other. I did that once, running the Comodo firewall and forgetting to turn off the Windows firewall.

Speaking of firewalls, Windows Firewall and Norton Internet Security do not play well together at all on a Vista machine (or at least on my laptop.) Needless to say, Norton lost and was uninstalled and I've no problems with Windows Firewall since.

I had AVG for awhile, but it got to where the security center notification kept popping up when I'd boot up telling me that Windows Defender was turned off or that AVG wasn't turned on. But when I'd check AVG, the status that showed on the interface was that everything was on and running fine.

So now I've went back to Avast and so far, so good. But then I'm still tweaking, as I had the hard drive worked on (my recovery mode was disabled and it needed to go into the shop for a clean sweep, which it got weekend before last.)