What antivirus program do you use?

[Modelworks]

What's the CPU hit though? If your system is up a week what's the CPU Time for that process. That was my problem with Symantec; leave your system up for a week and rtvscan.exe is the top CPU Time process. Not to mention it rapes your HDD.

Not saying it is excessive or is a problem for my pc, most of the time I forget it is even running.
Stats on the process since last reboot. System uptime is 5 days 20 hours.

 

[CRXican]

http://www.microsoft.com/security/products/mse.aspx
Free, quiet, low resource use, absolutely zero nagging and effective. The best free tool available at the moment.

This is what I've been using. I blame it for making my hard drive go wacky at times (seeking feverishly for a period) but I can't be sure it's to blame. Otherwise I don't notice it.

 

[Zargon]

MSE and One Care on my single remaining XP machine, till I get around to swapping it to MSE

 

[JujuFish]

Avira for AV, Comodo for firewall/HIPS.

 

[Kelemvor]

I switched all my PCs and everyone I work on's PCs to Avast's free version. Never heard of anyone who got a virus or anything with that. It's all I use now. Free. Updates all the time. Great.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

For Linux I use nothing.
For Windows I use Avira Free, Opera, Firefox, and Windows Firewall.

 

[IronWing]

I'm curious about the various statements above that "never got a virus" because the chosen software never found a virus. Have folks tried using one program for a while then switching to a different program to see if it finds stuff the first didn't? I haven't tried myself so I am curious to hear what the results of such testing reveal.

 

[Acanthus]

None, windows defender disabled.

1. I am not retarded, so i dont open "pics" called "mynudepicslol.exe" from spam email.

2. They are more for peace of mind than actually defense, they rarely catch anything because the virus is often too new.

3. Windows Update is probably the best defense out there, to prevent worms.

 

[Pantlegz]

avast

 

[Modelworks]

None, windows defender disabled.

1. I am not retarded, so i dont open "pics" called "mynudepicslol.exe" from spam email.

What do you do when you download an update or a new program that you chose to install and it contains a virus ?

I have found some in the past year in programs off sites like download.com

 

[dennilfloss]

Norton AV 2010. Easy on resources and performs very well according to trusted comparative tests (best product of 2009 according to AV Comparative). Before that, I had Kasperski's, followed by NAV 2009.

 

[Brainonska511]

Avira's Antivir (and used XP's security settings to disable to popup). Firewall: Windows built-in one.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Antivir on SUSE Linux
Norton 2010 on Windows 7

To see comparisons of how effective various Anti-Virus products really are, checkout the AntiVirus Detection Rate Thread:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=37481&highlight=

The best way to deal with viruses is to prevent them
Checkout mechBgon's website for detailed instructions on securing your system and preventing viruses:
http://www.mechbgon.com/build/security2.html

 

[Udgnim]

use Avast but the update that produced tons of false positives was interesting

 

[MarkXIX]

Not using an AV app today is simply ignorant, I'm sorry, I have to say it.

You can't tell me you don't have spare CPU cycles and memory to be able to run one.

I use MSE. I used to be Symantec faithful, mostly because the Army gives it to me for free (that or McAfee, which I had a bad experience with many years ago and never forgave them).

 

[Modular]

I use the free version of McAfee that comes with Comcast.

 

[GTaudiophile]

Eset nod32

 

[Adrenaline]

I don't have a virus scanner on my computer. I have not had a virus on my computer that I can recall. Every time I tell someone this they never believe me. I installed a virus scanner on my last computer and ran it for my brother and it did not have a single virus after 3 years of running nonstop.

I let my wife have the downstairs pc and it got a virus on it in less than 2 months from her downloading something. I had to reformat the computer.

I will look through the suggestions here and grab one soon though. Better to be safe than sorry.

Edit:

I just grabbed MSE and will try it out.

 

[coloumb]

Avast - but right now Norton Internet Security because it was free at a Windows7 event

 

[SunnyD]

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2353447,00.asp only reason it got a score of "good" is because it's free. This program deals with spyware horribly, I can't count how many times I've had it detect something on somebodies computer and claim it cleaned it out when it didn't do shit. I'd give it a 6.5/10 and that's being generous. My job is 90% removing spyware and viruses from peoples computer. This program does not do a good job. It's MS's answer to Mcaffee, which is possibly the worst "security" program I've ever encountered. Actually I'll give MS's proggy a 9/10 because it leads me to a ton of business which I wouldn't get if the people weren't cheap and bought Malwarebytes & NOD32. Funny thing is big allure of MSE to these people is the price. But when I go to fix their PC it cost them $99-125 for me to get their shit back into working order. It might be the best free AIO solution but I'll still take Avast + the free Malwarebytes for better protection.

Maybe my findings aren't super accurate, but having dealt with 5 PC's this month alone with MCE and still having spyware I can say it's a questionable program in my eyes.

You do realize that MSE is the antivirus counterpart to Windows Defender which is designed for spyware right?

I think your rant is pretty much worthless because odds are those "cheap" people that are coming to you for help likely had absolutely nothing protecting their PC prior to installing MSE (true, likely because of the price), and then MSE did it's job and started flagging infected shit left and right like it should, panicking those potential customers into calling someone for help.

MSE ranks slightly below Avira and significantly above Avast in terms of virus protection in terms of the last tests that were done. Of course as I said, if you install any antivirus or antimalware package after you've already been compromised, of course it will look like a piece of crap software from a prevention standpoint.

Be that as it may, I use Antivir free simply because I installed it before MSE came out and am too lazy to switch.

 

[Hyperlite]

Microsoft security essentials...less obtrusive than antivir and seems to do a great job.

 

[drnickriviera]

Those of you who do run AV software, how many viri have they found?

In my computer repair biz, I tell my customers not to bother with AV software, and to just use a good malware/spyware software. That's where 99% of my calls come from. People that had AV software (AVG free, updated) couldn't even detect trojans that spyware software did. I was scratching my head on that one.

I haven't run into a true virus in years.

I don't run and AV software in my home PC's

 

[Imp]

Avira. It's let shit through before, but I was stupidly using an admin account, so serves me right kinda.

I also use Malwarebytes when I really want to be sure nothings there. Both coupled together work good. The last virus I got made it a point to screw up my Malwarebytes install.

 

[SparkyJJO]

AVG free. Sure they push the pro version - you pay for that one - but the free one is still working just fine.

I've heard this rumor that Norton has gotten better. Meh, still hogs resources, infests just about everything in Windows, doesn't even turn "off" when you tell it to. Not paying for crap like that. Every time I work on a machine with Norton I want to punch its lights out.

Of course, the best is when you have both McAfee and Norton on the same system D:

 

[lxskllr]

Those of you who do run AV software, how many viri have they found?

In my computer repair biz, I tell my customers not to bother with AV software, and to just use a good malware/spyware software. That's where 99% of my calls come from. People that had AV software (AVG free, updated) couldn't even detect trojans that spyware software did. I was scratching my head on that one.

I haven't run into a true virus in years.

I don't run and AV software in my home PC's

If you're smart, A/V software is for a "just in case" scenario. I don't really get viruses, but they're out there, sometimes in unlikely places. I think it's a good idea to use A/V, as it doesn't harm system performance(with a decent package), and the time may come when it saves your ass.