Informal Poll on best free antivirus.

What free antivirus do you use? Is it well respected to catch nearly everything. Is it memory hungry and does it take long to load?

Any answers will be good.

I used Avast which is free for 12 months and it seems to take a while to load, but other than that is very good.

I use Avast at the moment.

I use AVG which seems fine. It updates itself every day. I haven't noticed it taking particularly long to load (amongst all my other boot-up apps) or it being a memory hog. I just installed it and pretty much forgot about it, tbh. I actually went several years without using any anti-virus at all, after having huge grief using Norton, so I can't really compare AVG to any other prog. Just don't get anything with "Norton" in the title. :)

I use McAfee Virusscan 9 at the moment. Uses about 30mb of resources. Does its job well.

AVG, without a doubt. Free for personal use, and is less of a resource hog & more stable than either McAfee or Norton Antivirus.

Hate anything Norton

For a long time i was using PC-Cillin, which came free with my motherboard and i found it to be very good.

I had really bad problems with McAfee, locked up the computer whenever i did something with large (100mb+) files, which i do often. I found AVG to be the best of the three on Windows

Now i've just switched to linux, and i'm not sure what to get - are there even many virus threats on linux????

AVG Free Edition

I've used AVG Free Edition ever since Norton 2002 expired on me. Its not a resource hog and does the job just fine.

Well, I did install Norton 2004 but took it off after 5 minutes of seeing what a resource hog it was, it actually slowed down my laptop!. I'll never go back to Norton AV again, unless I hear its super resource friendly.

AVG for me, it runs nicely in the background and has never caused me a problem.

There aren't any viruses for Linux, so you don't need to worry. However, there are antivirus apps for Linux that are mainly for scanning emails so you don't accidentally forward viruses to Windows users. The best of these is the open-source ClamAV. It can be set up to scan all emails that go through your local mail server, or you can just use it on the command line to check individual files.

AVG for me.

this is not true... however, last I heard, there were only a handful of them..

oh, and I use AVG on windows..

Virus' can infect your computer and make everything run slowly and crash.

Anti-Virus software *WILL* make your computer run slowly and crash.

If you are using P2P software it's easier to deal with an anti-virus program than the constant virus removals, otherwise, learning the contents of task manager via google will save you more grief in the long run.

I use avast. It's not memory hungry although the updates do take 100% cpu for a few seconds. otherwise, fantastic. transparent virus scanning all over the damned place. I recommend it, http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html

Becky,

I'd seriously suggest you try AVG. its practically transparrent!

I use AVG, though for the first time ever, about two weeks ago i came home to find all the AVG installs on the home computers corrupted and needed to be reinstalled to a *different* folder to work properly again.

I guess a virus got out,in and hit the system before the AV programs updated. :/

I was like Becky and didn't have an anti virus pr9ogram util around 2002, and then I got a stink virus that had to be manually removed (once I'd read up on the topic). Then I used norton for a few years, but hated the loading time and memory hog. Used to disable it before playing any games as it really slows down disk accessing!

Seems like AVG is popular. Maybe I'll disable my avast bootup and still see if my PC is slow to load into XP, because it could be something else. To be honest though, I only have 3 sys tray icons: Avast, volume and safely remove hardware (due to a USB printer). I like to keep my startup minimal for speed anyway unlike some people's 20 or so incons my god!

AVG here aswell. Norton is evil.

I used to use AVG but I fell out with it when I realised that it was what was causing Outlook to take up to 15 minutes to open even moderately sized mail folders - they weren't even that big, about 400 mails. Maybe it's got better recently but since then I've used eTrust EZ Antivirus (or whatever it used to be called) - cheap (free for the first year) and no resource hogging.

That AVG outlook thing sounds bad. I have outlook express with 1000s of emails in the folder, I wonder how it will handle that?

Hmmm. youre right! Didnt think about it, but my Outlook takes forever to open!

Thunderbird? ;)

AVG, all others I've tried are worse than having a virus.

Thunderbird indeed. Thats what i was thinking ;)

It won't, or rather it didn't used to. At the time I tried importing all my stuff in OE and it was just the same. Basically killed OE for about 15 minutes while it scanned a folder with about 400 mails in it.


Tried it recently, but I got put off 'cos I couldn't see any way to get my stuff back out of it if I decided to do so later. That and some of the (non-fatal, but still irritating) bugs I came across. So back to Outlook (which I hate, but it works :-)

Im with Becky Rose, If your smart, careful about the sites you visit and what you put into your machine, then theres really no need for a Virus scanner. Hell, all I've been using for the past 3 years is ya basic Windows Firewall. Never once have I had to reformat, reinstall, or virus scan my system.

Thunderbird sucks, I tried it out for around a month and even though they are little problems, they gradually build up to a plain nightmare. Outlook 2003 is by far the best commercial email app out there. Even outlook express does a better job than thunderbird.

HappyCat: How's Eridani coming on. It was cool but I wanted more! My shooter is progressing OK too. I'll post in showcase in a few weeks hopefully. Sorry to myself for threadjacking my own thread.

Grey: It's coming along fine - it's taking longer than I anticipated to "finish" - partly because I'm adding a bunch of features and partly because, well, these things always take longer than you think don't they :-)

yup they do. One good thing is you already have the entire game structure (intro page, options, game, level complete, game over) etc in place as well as a web page so all the boring admin stuff is done, so all you've go to do is game programing, graphics and sound now (which will take ages). Of course to release it commerically you're gonna have to do some more boring admin like work out license key method and limited demo levels or timer method, ecommerce, marketing, installer (you may have done this already), upgrader, help page/FAQ, email support, bank account for money (this bit's OK!) etc

I haven't had any problems with Thunderbird on the various computers I have used.. I even run it on my iMac..

I don't have an antivirus installed...
Said this, I'm not really smart about what I let run on my computer, so once in a while I have to get rid of some nasty trojans, but I usually do it by hand - hunt down files, look them up in task manager, msconfig... You know the rutine...
About a month ago I had my IE hijacked (and I paniked), but managed to get rid of it too...
I still do a antivirus scan every year or so with shareware versions of new antiviruses, but so far they didn't find anything...
But I may take a look a some free antivirus - you know... just to make things easier a little...

My nickname around here is "The Human Antivirus" :)

Well if you're not gonna run an antivirus at least keep a copy of adaware handy for a monthly scan.

Well you're both wrong. A brand new Windows 2000 install was corrupted beyond repair after just 8 hours of doing absolutely nothing online. Accidently visiting a russian pr0n site, is one of the less evils you can do to your PC. Being ignorant about security is much more severe than all the Russian pr0n in the world.

There are far too many security holes being exploited in WinXP for me not to have a virus scanner to hand. MSBlaster comes to mind.

I have AVG for the same reasons given by the other AVG users here.

Blaster got through most AV's. to block it required a firewall, not an AV.

Blaster is where i got the nickname "The Human Antivirus"- My computer went down, then my mates, in the same day, i suspected a virus, and was able to find a cure for this Blaster (although only temporary until i could fix it properly), before Norton, AVG, got around to updating.

I remember saying there was a virus. Then, that evening, it was confirmed. "Today a new comptuer virus took hold of millions of computers around the world." etc.


I was like "HA! Told you!"
Thats a total three computers with the Blaster virus fixed before the media got a hold of it, and before Norton\AVG Updated the definitions.

I reinstalled a brand new PC with XP, went online to upgrade the service pack and immediately got Blaster and the whole shut down in 60 secs crap. All I did was connect to the internet without even loading IE! That's why you need a virus killer/firewall!

Avast here

AVG

Also, screw Adaware, use Spybot, screw Outlook, use GMail

Just need someone like Wedoe to summarise this info now.

Say yes to:

AVG / Avast
Opera / Firefox

Say no to:

Norton AV
Internet Exploder + LookOut Express

Norton seems to have gained a reputation of being a bloat-a-matic resources hog. Buggering up your system too.
I got a free trial version and the usual AOL v12000 (or whatever version they are at) with my PC.
I wouldn't even let a dog catch them in a game of Frisbee.

Wrong am I?

I've never had a server go down after just 8 hours. I use a hardware firewall & a hosts file.

Personally my PC has never been infected with a virus, although I have had some adware (most recently from a freeware game with a silent background installer) because I dont browse randomly very often and I have a malliscious site-blocking hosts file for when I do, and I do not use P2P software.

Of all the virus' my friends and family have had that I have removed (and there's been quite a few) I have never once managed to remove the virus with an anti-virus tool. In the case of Norton I actually had to uninstall it in order to be able to remove a virus by hand.

With PC-Cillin I even identified a virus by hand after a virus check missed it and then checked the details online to make sure I had the correct virus database and engine and it still couldn't find the thing - and that was a very serious one that stole my sisters credit card details resulting in £10,000 of fraud.

The last virus I had on my own computer was back on the Amiga when a friend bought a PC and gave me his games collection.

Using Norton here at the moment on this PC (got a free 1yr subscription with it, thought why not), but from my experiance with it, I preferred AVG (which I used on the other 2 PCs in this house), and will be moving this PC to it also at the end of my subscription.....which is in 3 days. >.>

For those who aren't running an anti virus app and think they're being rather clever about things, perhaps they ought to ask themselves how they know they haven't got a virus?

I don't know about you but my work is to important to be infected and my productivity worth too much money to be compromised.

I guess for people with no responsibilities...

Actually that's a good point. If you are a professional and you spread a virus to your clients/customers, you have really messed up!

If anything you should at least scan your comp with Housecall every so often:

http://housecall.trendmicro.com

Its an online scanner that scans once, removes the problems and goes away again, its totaly free and it gets my personal reccomendation for those without a permenant scanner

I've never run into that problem, and have had folders with 50,000+ messages.

(oops. accidental loop in an automated system notification program, generating oodles of mail)

As I said, it was a while ago and may well have been sorted by now. At the time though it was a real confidence killer.

AVG here. (btw, There is a utility to backup and restore thunderbird profiles called MozBackup. It was free and it worked).

AVG yet again

While I think spybot is better overall than Ad-Aware, neither spybot of ad-aware is superior to the other one -- I've had plenty of situations where Spybot claimed a system was clean while Ad-Aware managed to find a bunch of extra things, and the other way around as well.

for the best protection, you should run BOTH, and also periodically run cwshredder -- coolwebsearch is a particularly nasty virus-like spyware program with many different versions, and none of the anti-spyware programs can completely clear out all versions... Both spybot and ad-aware will leave traces behind of some of the incarnations. Cwshredder will remove all known variations of cool web search, but won't deal with any other spyware.

Antivir free version

For those who put their faith in virus scanners which have a 1 in 3 chance of detecting an out of date virus and no chance of detecting anything recent I would like to know how they know their system is clean?

I check mine manually very regularly and I know what i'm doing, most virus' are written by a very small group of people (like almost all spam comes from the same 300 Yanks, and 30 Dutchmen) and it's fairly easy to learn the tricks that they repeatedly use, spot 1 trick like an editted win.ini and it will soon lead you to all the others.

I know the stuff that appears in my task list intimately and I check it numerous times throughout the day - usually as I make a dodgy compile and need to end task.

I spent last night removing malware and virus' from my Dad's laptop - his virus checker didn't pick any of it up, and as usual the payload involved numerous badly written software apps and not just 1 virus. None we're detected.

Then I sorted out my Dad's PC which had a very cunning virus that made it's own version of task manager and sysedit making it harder to spot - virus checker didn't pick that up either. Actually it was very well written, one of the hardest to remove that I have come across yet because it used lots of tricks I hadn't seen before - like the sysedit spoofing etc.

Give it 3 weeks and the virus which hit my Dad's PC last night will appear in the databases of 25-33% of anti virus software. The rest of you will still be vulnerable.

Becky has a point.

The AV companies *may* be quick- but if i manage to fix three computers before a severe threat even becomes known to the companies, thats just not quick enough.

As i said earlier, both computers in my house had their AVG installation corrupted a couple of weeks ago, still to an unknown cause.

xlsior : Got point about the other spyware package.

As a consultant I keep on fixing people's PCs who have them stuffed full of literally hundreds of viruses and spyware because they either had no antivirus or never kept it up to date! If you are and IT expert and don't use peer to peer software, yes maybe you can keep your PC clean and spot tale tale signs, but most people haven't a clue. When I fix their PCs I install Adaware and Avast and show them how to keep up to date plus train them on using Microsoft Update and they very rarely get any problems again (perhaps I'm doing myself out of work ;-))

Disabling 3rd party browser extension support in internet exploder can also make a big difference in keeping things clean... Prevents a good chunk of spyware from nestling in.

xlsior. Nice tip, just disabled it, woo. Mind you I never seem to get them as I don't click "OK" on those "you must optimise your PC" type messages.

Grey: What would you do if they swapped the OK and Cancel around? Ive had some HTML based stuff install, ignoring weather i hit OK or Cancel at all :/

Yeah I've seen that sort thing but normally there is a fake close button and then the real one in the top right. Also you can Alt+F4.

True. i never touched any buttons after that :) (alt+f4 rules.)

I use Antivir Personal.

AVG: Auto Scan daily (or nightly). Auto Update daily
Turn off email scanning as it's a cpu and network killer
Instead Use !TheBat (far less prone), gain threaded email in a good format too.

M$ Anti spyware (free from M$) run with the active sheild/checker enabled. Scan nightly. Make sure it keeps itself up to date daily.

Firewall:
Pick one, use it. Set it sensibly.

Get behind NAT on a router where ever you possibly can.

Browser:
Firefox, make sure you find good sensible settings, but set to taste obviously - browse smarter if you can. Keep it up to date.

You mostly won't find you're dealing with anything face to face too often.

Lastly, think about it; if all the virus killers are really so good, how come we still got them? Who really stands to gain the most from virus creation anyway, i.e. who has the greatest motive to create one?

Heck of a question, really wish I had a heck of an answer to go with it.

Behind a hardware firewall or NAT router you are significantly safer, but many people don't have one of those, and are very likely to have major problems when hooking up an out-of-the-box windows 2000 or windows XP installation without hotfixes to the internet.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/19/infected_in20_minutes/

That was last year, when on average it would take 20 minutes for a fresh PC to be compromised, simply by being connected to the internet without the owner actually doing anything.

The biggest problem there is that it tends to take longer than that to even download & install the required servicepacks and hotfixes, so you are likely to have a major problem on your hands if you don't happen to have a firewall or the servicepacks etc. available on CD.

Follow-up tests this summer apparently showed that the average window before infection is down to 8 minutes or so now.

Personally I think it's a bad idea not to run a virus scanner -- even if you know what you're doing, it's awfully easy to end up with a virus, and a lot of times you won't notice any obvious signs. If one of your 'regular' programs ends up infected with who-knows-what, you may not see ANY unusual processes in your task manager, simply your known and 'trusted' application.

Many modern virusses lay very low, and are not destructive to your own data anymore, but will turn your machine into a zombie used to relay mail for payment for spammers all over the planet.

I'm behind a NAT router/firewall as well, and am careful what I do online -- but have still on more than one occasion have AVG kick in because some website tried to shove a trojan downloader through the wide-open door named Internet Explorer. This is BIG business these days, and there are countless 'harmless' looking websites that do their best cramming some extra stuff onto your computer, either directly or through embedded 3rd party advertising junk.

Without a virusscanner, I would never have noticed such occurances... If your PC successfully gets zombied, you may not notice much yourself other than a lsight slowdown in your internet connection speed, but you do end up causing a major nuisance to others on the internet when your PC is happily blasting spam across the internet for some shady outfit, helping them get around spam blocklists.

I understand the sentiment that many antivirus programs are garbage, and especially Norton has gone so far down hill over the past couple of years they need a backho to dig them back out on the other side, but I seriously recommend you give AVG a shot.

I can see you're unemployed and have the time to do this. I barely have time to finish my work before I'm rushed off my feet doing other things.



I say bull@#!*. I think you lie about a lot of things and over-dramatise wherever possible. In nearly every single thread you have posted in - and I back up my claim here, you have always noted some circumstance where you came off dramatically worse and why you know better.

I think it's safe to say you should be spending a lot less time on forums and computers and more time discovering the real world.

If that offends you then perhaps I'm right.

You will find that norton while being bloated, nails all viruses dead: just before you run an exe, before you open an archive and before you read an email. Pretty effective stuff.

If you are among the 1-2% of the internet population who get viruses first, then perhaps you should question the kind of content you like to view/execute.

That is basically what I said, I totally agree.