Best Antivirus?

[Belliinator]

Whats the best free antivirus tool/suite for windows

[rufius]

Considering antivirus has a success rate of around 25% if you're lucky, its almost not worth the extra process usage.

If you must use one, I would recommend Grisoft AVG Free. Found here: http://free.grisoft.com/

Its free, works well and even does email client filtering. I put it on my customers' computers and endorse it if someone really wants an antivirus suite.

Hope that helps :)

[angryfirelord]

If you don't need the real-time protection, then I would go for ClamWin:
http://www.clamwin.com/

Otherwise, I would use AVG.

[aysiu]

The best anti-virus is not running as an administrative user.

Run as a limited user.

[Wiebelhaus]

The best anti-virus is not running as an administrative user.

Run as a limited user.

Agree.

[jeffus_il]

Linux and a brain.

[SidewinderPro2]

Anything other than Windows Defender should do the job. Anyone else see the Vista ridicule video on youtube? "Windows Defender DCS: Doesn't Catch S***"

How do you update the Virus Scanner you can download in the Add/Remove utility? I know it isn't as necessary and urgent to scan a Linux machine, but I never let my guard down. As a Windows user for many many years, I've seen a few messes caused by malicious code.

Luckily never got one myself as I am cautious and use the best antivirus devised, common sense.

[blackenedbloodx]

lol watching it now. and yes i agree with AVG.
if not that then go with avast but theses are the free ones. Norton in my opinion is the best.

but then again linux is better still lol.

[c0met]

Avast! is free and I have found that to be pretty good, too. It also handles email. In addition, it's possible to install a Linux version of Avast! and that will allow you scan your Window's drives in case you get something nasty :)

It's at
http://www.avast.com

[sdowney717]

AVAST is great.
And it does spy ware.
I had one horribly infected pc and it cleared it all off by doing a startup scan.

[kerry_s]

Whats the best free antivirus tool/suite for windows

normally i use avg, but i've recently been using spyware terminator to cover both spyware and virus's instead of scanning with 2 different apps i just use the 1. spyware terminator uses clam av.

no ad's,no nag's, no spyware, no virus's, just free
http://www.spywareterminator.com/

i have a low resource system so i just use it once a week to scan the whole system and the right click scan when i'm not sure about a download, other than that it's turned off. it's a bit heavy on ram for my tastes, that's why i just use when needed.
pics->

[karellen]

I like eset smart security and bitdefender, even if the latter being a little resource hungry. and from the free alternatives, avast

[timzak]

http://www.av-comparatives.org/

This site claims ESET NOD32 as "overall winner" in 2007. Best combination of detection rate, speed, and resource usage.

AVIRA Antivir has the best performance of a FREE antivirus program. Its only weaknesses were high false positives and slow/limited updates (for free version only--but they only tested the paid version). It is VERY light on resources and does come in a paid version too. The only differences between free and paid versions are dedicated email scanning (paid version scans email attachments prior to attempts to open; free version only scans when you try to open attachments), faster update server for paid version, and banner ads during definition updates on free version. Free and paid versions have the same scanning engine and definition files, so scanning performance is equal.

FYI.

[cyclefiend2000]

i use avast.

[SunnyRabbiera]

Avast! is free and I have found that to be pretty good, too. It also handles email. In addition, it's possible to install a Linux version of Avast! and that will allow you scan your Window's drives in case you get something nasty :)

It's at
http://www.avast.com

isnt that trialware though?
it says 60 days and must be registered.

[zetetic]

Whats the best free antivirus tool/suite for windows

It seems the best is nod32. But remember it is proprietary, so you should not trust it.

[zetetic]

http://www.av-comparatives.org/

This site claims ESET NOD32 as "overall winner" in 2007. Best combination of detection rate, speed, and resource usage.

AVIRA Antivir has the best performance of a FREE antivirus program. Its only weaknesses were high false positives and slow/limited updates (for free version only--but they only tested the paid version). It is VERY light on resources and does come in a paid version too. The only differences between free and paid versions are dedicated email scanning (paid version scans email attachments prior to attempts to open; free version only scans when you try to open attachments), faster update server for paid version, and banner ads during definition updates on free version. Free and paid versions have the same scanning engine and definition files, so scanning performance is equal.

FYI.

Sorry but are you absolutely sure Avira Antivir is free? Or are you calling it free as in free beer?

[jbaerbock]

My favorite Virus Defence is not using Windows, but if you must AVG by Grisoft is definitely on the top of the free ones. But as was said if you are smart then it almost isn't worth it since they use up tons of system resources.

[SunnyRabbiera]

Sorry but are you absolutely sure Avira Antivir is free? Or are you calling it free as in free beer?

well free as in beer is good enough when running in windows.
I know plenty of good free as in beer apps

[timzak]

Sorry but are you absolutely sure Avira Antivir is free? Or are you calling it free as in free beer?

Free as in they legally let you use it without having to pay money to anyone.

[jbaerbock]

I had AntiVir on my XP for awhile and it was very slow in doing anything. Don't thing I ever sucessfully downloaded an update either, always seemed to freeze mid download.

[karellen]

Sorry but are you absolutely sure Avira Antivir is free? Or are you calling it free as in free beer?

free as in beer is enough, at least from my point of view

[zetetic]

free as in beer is enough, at least from my point of view

So this is just a question of money? lollllllllllll

[mr.farenheit]

avast is fairly decent as is avg. i primarily went with avg though in my windows based comp.

[karellen]

So this is just a question of money? lollllllllllll

of course. I keep ethics and morality for other purposes besides computers programs

[Ripfox]

normally i use avg, but i've recently been using spyware terminator to cover both spyware and virus's instead of scanning with 2 different apps i just use the 1. spyware terminator uses clam av.

no ad's,no nag's, no spyware, no virus's, just free
http://www.spywareterminator.com/

i have a low resource system so i just use it once a week to scan the whole system and the right click scan when i'm not sure about a download, other than that it's turned off. it's a bit heavy on ram for my tastes, that's why i just use when needed.
pics->

What is this "crawler" and "crawler toolbar" then?!? I didn't install it, I aborted.

[sox fan Matt]

If I were to use an AV (Which would mean paying $150 or more for a license since I cant exactly find where my xp disk went to, i'd probably use AVAST! to use all the improvements, but im happy in the linux world :)

[kerry_s]

What is this "crawler" and "crawler toolbar" then?!? I didn't install it, I aborted.

the crawler toolbar is optional, i always uncheck it. gave up on windows though, it's just to much work to keep it clean. :)

[vishzilla]

AVG or Avast as Free AVs
Nod32 in case of paid

[Living2007]

The best anti-virus for XP tends to change very few months. Sometimes Nortan, Sometimes AVG and Sometimes Ad-aware.

It just depends what you want hand how much you are willing to pay.

[timzak]

As a longtime Avira Antivir user, I decided to give the other big free AV a try (Avast!). In some ways, it is more feature-filled than Antivir. It has more scanning options, such as scanning emails, etc. Antivir does not specifically scan your emails (no POP scanner) but it still will scan any attachment you try to access, so IMO there is no huge benefit to having a dedicated POP scanner. Avast is also a bit more intrusive (frequent pop up messages) and bloated than Antivir. Both are good, both have excellent detection rates according to av-comparatives.org. Avast has more features, but takes up more resources and hard disk space. Antivir is more stripped down, but uses less resources and hard disk space, and is less intrusive on your computing. Avast likes to pop up windows telling you about suspicious this or that, and never was the suspicion justified in my case.

The one thing I couldn't find on Avast that is present on Antivir is a scanning scheduler. I use this with Antivir to download definitions and scan for rootkits and viruses when I am not using the computer. I couldn't figure out how to do this in Avast. I'm sure it could be done with Windows Task Scheduler but I didn't have the time to tinker with it.

After a week using Avast, I uninstalled it and went back to Avira Antivir. I like that Antivir is "lean and mean". As a basic virus scanner, it has one of the highest detection rates, with none of the frills that get in my way. Others may benefit from those frills, but I prefer a lean, basic scanner.

I've heard lots of complaints about Antivir definitions being slow to download. I usually don't have a problem, but occasionally it slows down. Generally it doesn't take more than a few minutes to download and install updates. If you schedule this during times you are away from your computer, it eliminates this complaint.

[Chiko2008]

I prefer Avast than AVG.

Ubuntu (http://www.linux-archive.org/ubuntu/)

[heartburnkid]

Avira's nice, but I grew to really dislike the way it pops up a huge ad for the Pro version whenever it downloads updates (which is every other day).

For no-frills scanning, my choice is AVG. I prefer Avast on a system that has resources to spare, though.

[timzak]

Avira's nice, but I grew to really dislike the way it pops up a huge ad for the Pro version whenever it downloads updates (which is every other day).

For no-frills scanning, my choice is AVG. I prefer Avast on a system that has resources to spare, though.

There is a registry hack to disable the pop-up (you can google it). Personally, I just hit the Enter key and it goes away (it is the active window and hitting Enter is just like clicking the OK button at the bottom of the window).

Another of Avira's limitations is you cannot schedule more than one definition update per 24 hours using the built in scheduler. However, that doesn't stop you from manually checking more frequently if you want to.

I haven't tried AVG yet. I read that its detection rate is lower than Avira's and that the free version has a lower detection rate than the paid version (unlike Avast and Avira, which do not compromise the scanning performance of their free versions).

[heartburnkid]

I didn't know about the Registry hack. Does it have to be done with every new version?

And yeah, AVG's detection rate is slightly worse than Avira's, but it's about on par with Avast's. As for the free version having a lower detection rate than the paid version... I'd really like to see a source on that, if you have one handy. That'd pretty much turn me off of AVG right there.

[timzak]

I didn't know about the Registry hack. Does it have to be done with every new version?

And yeah, AVG's detection rate is slightly worse than Avira's, but it's about on par with Avast's. As for the free version having a lower detection rate than the paid version... I'd really like to see a source on that, if you have one handy. That'd pretty much turn me off of AVG right there.

I'm not sure about the registry hack. I only tried it once. It seemed to hold through online updates, but I did do a reinstall (after I finished trying Avast) and now it now the pop-up window is back. But like I said, it's simple to just hit the enter key to make it go away, so I didn't bother with th registry hack this time.

Here is the source. See the first reply by the AV-Comparatives Admin:

http://www.av-comparatives.org/forum/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=781

It seems like the difference is that the paid version also detects malware, and the free doesn't. So the technically, the paid version has a higher overall detection rate when you consider both viruses and malware.

Sorry if I misled. I was going by memory and until I found my source, didn't remember the details.

Good luck!

[Living2007]

What happens when AVG is hacked?

[karellen]

I happen to like Eset Smart Security :). besides, it's pretty light with resources

[Kevbert]

Norton Security Suite plus Spybot Search and Destroy work well (my Favourite for Windows). Tried AVG (free version) fine but basic. Zone Alarm OK. McAfee Internet Security Suite can be a pain to set up.
Best solution Linux plus ClamAV.

[heartburnkid]

I'm not sure about the registry hack. I only tried it once. It seemed to hold through online updates, but I did do a reinstall (after I finished trying Avast) and now it now the pop-up window is back. But like I said, it's simple to just hit the enter key to make it go away, so I didn't bother with th registry hack this time.

Here is the source. See the first reply by the AV-Comparatives Admin:

http://www.av-comparatives.org/forum/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=781

It seems like the difference is that the paid version also detects malware, and the free doesn't. So the technically, the paid version has a higher overall detection rate when you consider both viruses and malware.

Sorry if I misled. I was going by memory and until I found my source, didn't remember the details.

Good luck!

Ah, see, if that's the case, then I'm not too worried about switching and futzing with registry hacks to get rid of the popups. I usually pair AVG or Avast with Spybot anyway, for the anti-malware angle.

[Chiko2008]

What about Kaspersky?
Recently an IT magazine here said that it's the best antivirus. What do you think?

Ubuntu (http://www.linux-archive.org/ubuntu/)

[Ensamvarg]

I personally use AVG Anti-Virus / Anti-Spyware, Spybot: Search & Destroy, and Ad-Aware 2007. I think AVG is alright but it doesn't pick up all the viruses that the other 2 do. Plus it does sap your resources quite alot. If all else fails I use the online Trend Micro scanner.

[Saint Angeles]

back when i used windows 98 and then windows xp, the best way to get rid of malware and the like was a complete reformat and fresh install about every 6 months.

i know its a bit overkill, but the way that AV software was back in those days was horrible. they hogged all available resources... like norton.

norton was worse than all the things it found. since switching to linux, i laugh when i go to a computer store and see an entire aisle dedicated to AC software.

[timzak]

Avira Antivir was just updated with a new user interface and "faster scanning". IMO the look is vastly improved...still simple and uncluttered, but it looks more modern. I'm not sure about the scanning speed as I've never measured it before.

FYI.