Any non-bloated virus scanners?

[rubix]

Does anyone know of a nice non-bloated virus scanner for Windows XP? (not IE/ActiveX based please)

McAfee, Norton AV and even AVG are just crap to me. I don't like programs that hook themself into your system and spread tons of crap files throughout your system (150+ files & 70+mb? WTF) and bloat the registry and have these lame extra crap features. AVG isn't as bad as the other two, but it's not what I call good either. It's a clunky mess.

My dream virus scanner would be a simple small install, with minimal files, like maybe an exe and a readme and a virus database file. And all it would do is run manually and would either scan specific files you tell it to or an entire drive. That's it. No gay email scanning, or resident memory services that hog your memory/cpu or skins etc.

This frustrates me. You'd think someone out there would be into programming a simple lean mean virus scanner minus all the bloat and dummy features.

 

[powerMarkymark]

Have you tried AntiVir?

M@rc

 

[rubix]

actually i was reading about that one and a few others. they all sound pretty good to me. i was going to install antivir but then i found out about nod32. that one seems to be well respected and the reviews i've read claim it doesn't hog the system.

bitdefender is apparently another good one, but it has a firewall built in or something so i will skip that one for now. the smallest one i found was called solo, but i don't know much more about it compared to nod32.

 

[Bar81]

Symantec Antivirus Corporate 9.0 or 10.0 are excellent and use minimal resources (unlike their crap yearly retail releases)

 

[Schadenfroh]

Running antivir here, currently using about 10mb of memory on my system. Not a system hog at all and it is free to home users. It also has a great detection rate according to http://www.av-comparatives.org/

 

[SagaLore]

Originally posted by: Bar81
Symantec Antivirus Corporate 9.0 or 10.0 are excellent and use minimal resources (unlike their crap yearly retail releases)

I hate to break it to you, but compared to many of the other AV out there, even Symantec Corporate edition is a resource hog. I'm not saying the AV is bad, just that it's one of the slowest performing ones.

Eset NOD32 prides itself on being one of the fastest.

 

[Bar81]

care to point me to a comparison showing that? It's never been a resource hog for me or slow for that matter, it's lightning quick. Then again it could be my system being fast and well maintained???

 

[n0cmonkey]

With the price of memory and hard drives, using a slightly large program shouldn't be an issue. :roll:

Live virus scanning is necessary, since 99% of the population is morons.

I use clamwin.

 

[bob4432]

i think i will give antivir a try, hell it is made in germany

 

[RedCOMET]

Originally posted by: Bar81
Symantec Antivirus Corporate 9.0 or 10.0 are excellent and use minimal resources (unlike their crap yearly retail releases)

there is a SAV 10.0? I'm still using 9.03

 

[rise]

AntiVir

 

[tami]

i sometimes use this

no need to install anything.

 

[bob4432]

i installed antivir and it found 3 viruses... and i have been running all flavors of nav on this machine, hell it is the first thing i install after a clean install...

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
With the price of memory and hard drives, using a slightly large program shouldn't be an issue. :roll:

Live virus scanning is necessary, since 99% of the population is morons.

I use clamwin.

It all adds up.
A slight hog here and there soon becomes a big hog. Hell, Windows XP is a "slightly large" program, add that to a large AV, MSN Messanger, something like Steam, a "slightly large" firewall, maybe video card drivers (ATi with CCC), MS Office startup bar, printer software, Creative sound stuff, Java updater, Winamp agent, Adobe speed launch etc and it adds up.

If 99% of the population is morons, they will just let all these programs be and let them hog memory.


I gave up on live scanning because I didn't feel it necessary. Hadn't got a virus, so I just have the scanner there to run when I want a check, slightly less safe, but virus issues are more about safe internet use than anything else.

 

[BW86]

I'm running AntiVir here. Using ~10mb now.