Best FREE Antivirus?

MustISO

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
11,927
12
81
Microsoft Security Essentials, Avast 5.0 or Avira. I also use MalwareBytes as a secondary scanner.
 

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
57,960
8,204
126
I use Avira on my machines, and MSE on machines I maintain for others.
 

Cogman

Lifer
Sep 19, 2000
10,283
134
106
I have not used AV in about 2 years while using Vista and 7 and have not had an infection!

How would you know if you had an infection? (not that I really doubt you, viruses are more of a scare then an actual threat for most safe surfer. I very rarely see a virus, and it is pretty much always expected when I do see them)
 

stargazr

Diamond Member
Jun 13, 2010
3,947
3,346
136
On a related note if you don't go with Microsoft Security Essentials and use a free AV, Superantispyware is still great. They have a free version. I've already ran a scan with Malwarebytes Anti-Malware finding 0 threats (which is a good highly recommended program) and immediately ran a Superantispyware scan, and it found over 300 items! I have both of them, figuring they may have different definitions from time to time.
 

bruceb

Diamond Member
Aug 20, 2004
8,874
111
106
I have switched over to Avast .. had Avira but they had that issue with memory leak back in Nov .. seems to be fixed now. So laptop has Avira, desktop has Avast which is very easily configurable. Also seems to be very light on system resources. PC boots up very fast now.
 

ImpulsE69

Lifer
Jan 8, 2010
14,946
1,077
126
Actually, I really haven't used a antivirus scanner for a few years, but when I do or suggest, it's AVG. I do however use malware scanners as that seems to be more of an issue, Spydoc S&D, Superantispyware, Malwarebytes.
 
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Cogman

Lifer
Sep 19, 2000
10,283
134
106
Actually, I really haven't used a antivirus scanner for a few years, but when I do or suggest, it's AVG. I do however use malware scanners as that seems to be more of an issue, Spydoc S&D, Superantispyware, Malwarebytes.

AVG used to be good, then it got slow, clugy, and just a pain to work with.
 
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wayliff

Lifer
Nov 28, 2002
11,718
9
81
How would you know if you had an infection? (not that I really doubt you, viruses are more of a scare then an actual threat for most safe surfer. I very rarely see a virus, and it is pretty much always expected when I do see them)

Because I do on demand scans once in a while to be sure.
 
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notposting

Diamond Member
Jul 22, 2005
3,489
30
91
I've been using Avast for a couple years now. I like it.

May switch to MSE at some point.
 

IGemini

Platinum Member
Nov 5, 2010
2,472
2
81
I use Comodo AV as a part of their IS suite. The firewall is very light, functional and protective though the AV uses more memory whenever I'm browsing. Though the detection rate has made it on par with the other popular ones since v5 and last I checked it passed AVG.

Used Norton and McAfee, neither of which I recommend to anyone. It's kinda scary how many big businesses use McAfee as their main antivirus. AVG is just clunky, like Cogman said.

Avast I used for some time and it was good, I liked the functionality but it eventually became way too memory-intensive.

Heard good things about MSE and Avira, might switch to one of them at some point. Kaspersky and Vipre are supposed to be good but aren't free.
 

bruceb

Diamond Member
Aug 20, 2004
8,874
111
106
I second the fact Avast is very light weight. My main pc only has 512MB of Rambus RAM
We tried McAfee 8.5i and the computer bogged down to a crawl. Out it came and in went Avast .. very quick now.
 

notposting

Diamond Member
Jul 22, 2005
3,489
30
91
Yeah Avast was starting to veer towards the AVG path but they had a big rewrite for version 5 and it's lightweight and unobtrusive. AVG just got too bloated for me. Used Antivir (Avira now I think) before that. I remember I had Disinfectant back in my early System 6 Mac days.
 

Auric

Diamond Member
Oct 11, 1999
9,591
2
71
I've personally used Kaspersky for many years (and recommended Avira free to others) because it is consistently among the best (detection, feature, and resource wise) and nearly free after rebates. However, since W7-64 I have settled on Comodo for a free firewall but because it includes other components which if enabled would conflict, KAV forces uninstallation -thus requiring KAV to be installed before Comodo. Both can save and restore their configurations but it remains an annoyance since KAV requires uninstallation and new installation between minor versions.

So, as the current license soon expires I wonder whether to change to either unified solution: Kaspersky Internet Security for its firewall or conversely enable Comodo's AV instead. How do each of the components compare? My usage requires good detection but not necessarily much automation.
 
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