# Can anybody recommend me good anti-virus software?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anybody-recommend-me-good-anti-virus-software/441712>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [March 17, 2008, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anybody-recommend-me-good-anti-virus-software/441712 "2008-03-17T22:15:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\
**Post date:** [March 19, 2008, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anybody-recommend-me-good-anti-virus-software/441712/21 "2008-03-19T20:33:04Z")

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Geek confirmation here, AVG Free does have updating problems, especially on Vista. The try icon turns gray when it can’t auto-update. If you manually click the update button it downloads the update, but sometimes doesn’t install it correctly. Probably a Vista permissions/security problem. I installed the latest version on a cow-orkers Vista machine a month or so ago, it fixed the problem for a while but it’s doing it again now.

It doesn’t happen to everyone though, AVG is still a decent enough program.

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**Author:** ![Lakai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9de0a6/32.png) [@Lakai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lakai)\
**Post date:** [March 20, 2008, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anybody-recommend-me-good-anti-virus-software/441712/22 "2008-03-20T00:15:56Z")

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[QUOTE=Sal Ammoniac]  
You’re right, and to the extent that Avast is both free and recommended, I’ll download it.

Your last sentence confused me, though. Does an antivirus program like Avast protect against spyware, or do you need something else?  
[/QUOTE]

An AV program usually doesn’t offer protection against all spyware. Avast seems like it provides some form of protection, but I would not know for sure since I haven’t used it.

To protect against spyware (for free) I would get [Spybot](http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html) and [Ad-Aware.](http://www.lavasoftusa.com/products/ad_aware_free.php) Get both as either one won’t catch everything.

If Spybot and Ad-Aware scans come up empty then I guess Avast would be enough for you.

Some software (I use Trend Micro) provides you with all three of the essential forms of protection (firewall, spyware and virus), but you would have to pay for those.

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