A friend needs AV software. My eTrust came with my computer & I never have to resubscribe, so I was looking to see if that was available for her. Nope. So I looked for anything that gives lifetime protection. Also, nope. Then I found “free AV software”.
CNET has AVG which both CNET and most customers give high ratings to. Even higher ratings for AVAST. And I find that tomorrow Microsoft releases its beta version of Security Essentials. All free.
So does anyone have any experience with any of these or other free software programs? And what are your recommendations?
Avast!, has a one time*, on demand*, complete “scan on boot-up” before Windows loads, slightly hidden in the menu. AIUI that’s even better than scanning in “Safe Mode”.
It also has a feature that adds a virus scan to your screen saver when the screen saver is running.
AVG used to at least scan the memory on boot-up many versions ago, unless they’ve just hidden the boot scan really well?
So, two big features in Avast!'s favor.
CMC fnord!
*You have to open the menu and tell Avast! you want to scan on boot-up, it doesn’t scan on boot if you don’t. (Which is good since a full scan EVERY time you boot would make starting you 'puter a VERY long process!)
AVG is okay but has had some high profile problems (detecting windows system files as viruses, their prefetching controversy, crashes, broken updates, increasing bloat, poor UI, etc). I usually recommend it, but now with MS releasing security essentials, I would try that first.
I used to use AVG up until version 8. Then it got rather bloated and annoying so I thought I’d give Avast a try. I’ve been fairly happy with Avast so far.
Can I make a plea for people to spell out abbreviations in the title of their posting? For me, the default meaning of “AV” is “audio visual”, and “audio-visual software” makes a certain amount of sense. The wiki disambiguation page lists a whole bunch of possible meanings, including “Authorised Version” and “artificial vagina”: I hope that Bible scholars and sex enthusiasts haven’t wandered into this thread by accident.
I have used AVG for years and never had any trouble. It might help that I keep my surfing to well known and established sites and never open attachments.
I have never run any antivirus on my computer because I prefer to do a web-based test once in a while just to make sure everything is OK but I recently bought a reconditioned laptop which came with Avira and it seems to work fine. The moment I notice it hogging resources out it goes.
You must not have two anti-virus programs. Select one or the other, and my opinion is to use AVG, especially since it is free. If you have more than one, they will be inspecting each other and really slow down your puter.
Myglaren:
SuperAntiSpyware is not an AV. It finds spyware and malware, but not viruses. It is OK to have several of these. I have half a dozen.
AVG is pretty much the ZoneAlarm of antivirus packages. NOD32 is a good solution if you are willing to shell out some money. Avira AntiVir seems to be the latest craze in free suites.
I use AVG and it’s been great. I have Vista SP2 and the only issue I had with AVG was when I first installed it, it was SO slow. I found if I disabled the link scanner it ran fine. AVG was literally scanning each link on every webpage first. This made it way to slow.
Disabled link scanner and it runs great.
I also use Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware, and I have Spybot Search and Destroy. I use Malwarebytes and AVG constantly and once a month I use Spybot to do an additional search of my computer.
So far (knock wood) it’s worked great.
If you do try another anti-virus make sure to remove the one you have now as they often conflict with each other. Revo-Uninstaller is a great free program to completely remove all of the software from your computer, as the built in software uninstaller of most programs usually misses a lot