Anti Virus recommendations for Vista

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cannondale06

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I'm a long time AVG user but the new AVG 8.0 is causing issues especially sluggishness. Several pages will sit there for a few seconds before responding and I will get random 10-15 freezes from time to time when I click on a link. I'm 100% positive that AVG is the problem becuase it effects both FF and IE7. Also the problems go away when I uninstall AVG and then come right back if I reinstall it.



Can someone just recommend a nice and simple free anti virus for me to use? thanks
 
Does anyone besides me NOT use any sort of virus protection? For my personal machine at home, I just don't see the point anymore. Viruses, as it were seem hardly a threat anymore, unless you download a lot of crap off of Limewire / Ares or have unfiltered email.

For a home machine, common sense seems to be the best AV protection there is.
 
^^ Hehe TRUE howeve ri believe in having some protection. IMO Firewalls are utter crap!
 
Slackmaster_Flex said:
Does anyone besides me NOT use any sort of virus protection? For my personal machine at home, I just don't see the point anymore. Viruses, as it were seem hardly a threat anymore, unless you download a lot of crap off of Limewire / Ares or have unfiltered email.

For a home machine, common sense seems to be the best AV protection there is.
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Please dont screw my thread up. I just want some recommendations and not a debate. ;)
 
I use avast. www.avast.com

It's free for the home edition and doesn't seem to make my machine sluggish at all. I've actually installed it on every computer I fix for someone and it hasn't let me down yet.
 
cannondale06 said:
Please dont screw my thread up. I just want some recommendations and not a debate. ;)
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Sorry guy. I just get asked that question more than ANY other one when it comes to computers, and it just seems not particularly applicable these days.

But....

Avast is good, AVG is good, ClamAV = BAD

I've experienced a pretty rough performance hit after running ClamAV.
 
brucedeluxe169 said:
not worth it, just keep UAC on and windows defender updated....
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what do you mean, "not worth it"? for one example, avast, which is very high quality and totally free and I don't even notice it running on my laptop nor desktop...what exactly is the cost here that is not justified? besides, the OP didn't ask if it was worth it or not, he just asked what was a good free AV basically.
 
Slackmaster_Flex said:
Does anyone besides me NOT use any sort of virus protection? For my personal machine at home, I just don't see the point anymore. Viruses, as it were seem hardly a threat anymore, unless you download a lot of crap off of Limewire / Ares or have unfiltered email.

For a home machine, common sense seems to be the best AV protection there is.
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No I don't recomend it. PC Tools who personaly I think makes one of the best spyware dection programs on the market came out with some interesting information from their own program scans with vista. Besides with more and more banking and online ordering going on you should have protection.

http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;128348660;fp;16;fpid;1


Personaly I'm a fan of Eset's NOD32 and Kaspersky's Av protection. Both products are top rated and are generaly pretty good on useing low resources. They are not free but are not expensive.
 
I second NOD32. I only use that and the firewall on my router for "protection". While I also agree that common sense would best serve against getting infected by viruses, you can't always avoid them and its always nice to know that you are atleast somewhat protected against malicious things.
 
rockfella said:
Use Avast Home Edition 8 with AD-WARE Se Pro.
No hassles.
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Ha, I use this same setup for my grandfather...BUT, works great tbh, even if not using Avast I would still reccommend picking up Adware SE it will pick up a lot of crap some antivirus software cant
 
I hate having native antivirus installed. I do online system scans occasionally via NOD32's site for free and run an online multi-antivirus scan of individual suspicious files via http://virusscan.jotti.org/

If you want malware protection for free resident, I say go with ThreatFire. It's free and doesn't hit the system at all. I also like to run hijackthis. ThreatFire is the closest I'll come to resident antivirus protection, and I don't run software firewalls. NAT ftw.
 
I used a trial NOD32 before getting Kaspersky AV. Kaspersky's been good to me so far. :)
 
Windows One Care! Not free, but the antimalware protection is top notch... But some might call me biased...

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
 
Slackmaster_Flex said:
Does anyone besides me NOT use any sort of virus protection? For my personal machine at home, I just don't see the point anymore. Viruses, as it were seem hardly a threat anymore, unless you download a lot of crap off of Limewire / Ares or have unfiltered email.

For a home machine, common sense seems to be the best AV protection there is.
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A hardware firewall/router helps tremendously....but I also have been running AVG for years....

It's not a resource issue, if your pc is slow enough, that running AVG is a problem...you need a newer computer :p

Occasionally I find an infected file from bittorrent, so yeah, having AVG (or other AV running) IS necessary....having the option to right click a file and have it scanned asap is a plus.

Personally, I think even savvy home users should run a low key AV software...it's just good sense.
 
TheRapture said:
A hardware firewall/router helps tremendously....but I also have been running AVG for years....

It's not a resource issue, if your pc is slow enough, that running AVG is a problem...you need a newer computer :p

Occasionally I find an infected file from bittorrent, so yeah, having AVG (or other AV running) IS necessary....having the option to right click a file and have it scanned asap is a plus.

Personally, I think even savvy home users should run a low key AV software...it's just good sense.
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It IS a problem with the new AVG 8. I have also used AVG for years and this new version causes the problems I said in my op. Its random but AVG 8 is 100% the cause because removing it returns my computer to normal. I have recreated and fixed the problem by installing and uninstalling 3 times just to make sure that AVG was the issue and it is.
 
I use Kaspersky. You can get a license off eBay for like $12, and the app works great. The free version of Avast has an annoying nag window that pops up every single day, and I find the app itself is not as seamless as Kaspersky. $12 well spent imo.
 
Not intending to be flamebait, but since when do nonprofessional nonbusiness users care about EULA. If you followed EULA to the letter, you wouldn't be able to run a no dvd crack on your own purchased game so you don't need to spin it. In my personal approach, fair use -always- trumps EULA, but I know a great deal of people wouldn't agree.
 
ocellaris said:
The free version of Avast has an annoying nag window that pops up every single day.
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Huh? You mean the little window in the corner that pops up saying the Database or program has been updated? It goes away after like 3 seconds. The only time I've noticed its presence is when it goes Red telling me it failed to update.

To each his/her own though.

Avast User at Home and Deployed at Work on all our users computers.
 
infornographer said:
Not intending to be flamebait, but since when do nonprofessional nonbusiness users care about EULA. If you followed EULA to the letter, you wouldn't be able to run a no dvd crack on your own purchased game so you don't need to spin it. In my personal approach, fair use -always- trumps EULA, but I know a great deal of people wouldn't agree.
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I work for a software company, so I respect all eulas in hopes that other people respect the eula for the software that covers my paycheck. its fine and all for other people to block the popups, this is just something I do for me.
 
Hence why I said "nonprofessional nonbusiness users" vs your "I work for a software company" : p

If I'm not a developer or a corporation, I'm not using software as part of a contract no matter what string of words are slung on it. Plenty of EULAs that exist in the wild today actually violate contract law. Some viruses are coming out with EULAs, just so you understand how ridiculous some of it gets. Are you going to respect the EULA of a virus too?

My approach is in the right of fair use until somehow a court and tons of corporate lawyer money gets involved, which is why I'm not acting as a developer or a business. No one is losing any money if I personally modify software and use it however I want, if I pay the companies who made it in the first place.
 
ocellaris said:
I use Kaspersky. You can get a license off eBay for like $12, and the app works great. The free version of Avast has an annoying nag window that pops up every single day, and I find the app itself is not as seamless as Kaspersky. $12 well spent imo.
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Avast free edition doesn't have any nag screens if you register it. Registration is free.
 
i use Avira Anti-Vir personal edition which is free. i use Vista 32 and have used Vista64 to compare with it for a month; Anti Vir worked fine with both editions.

iAnti-Vir is a lot better than any other full time scanner i have used; and i have used many including for pay. i also use Kapersky's online free scanner occasionally just in case.
 
ocellaris said:
I believe you have to break the EULA to do that. Maybe not, however they certainly did not provide me with a "stop annoying nag window" option...
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I didn't read the EULA, but the program settings offer a checkbox to disable the sliding update window and all sorts of stuff like that. I don't know why they'd put it in there if they didn't want you to do that. If you're talking about some sort of registration nag, just register the thing and be done with it. they never send me emails of any sort except for sending me the registry key.
 
cannondale06 said:
It IS a problem with the new AVG 8. I have also used AVG for years and this new version causes the problems I said in my op. Its random but AVG 8 is 100% the cause because removing it returns my computer to normal. I have recreated and fixed the problem by installing and uninstalling 3 times just to make sure that AVG was the issue and it is.
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I did not say it wasn't an issue for you, I was referring to running an antivirus program in general. AVG 8 for me, luckily, does not cause any slowdowns.

No harm intended.
 
That's odd. I would never use AVG 7.5 resident shield on Vista because it slowed down web browsing too much for my liking but I'm finding ver. 8.x is quite improved. AVG said themselves that they have sped up AVG 8.x compared to 7.x so don't know why you find it slower. I certainly don't and find has less effect on browsing than both Avast and F-Secure. I never installed the browser toolbar they offered and I never installed the email scanner either but everything else is enabled. Only thing I don't like about AVG 8.x is the spam slide out banner every time I do a scan but considering it is free I can live with it.

First scan I did with ver. 8.x it claimed a WinAmp plugin I had installed was a trojan but I'm fairly certain it was a false-positive because ver. 7.x never detected it as such and I have had the plugin installed for a long time.
 
milkweg said:
That's odd. I would never use AVG 7.5 resident shield on Vista because it slowed down web browsing too much for my liking but I'm finding ver. 8.x is quite improved. AVG said themselves that they have sped up AVG 8.x compared to 7.x so don't know why you find it slower. I certainly don't and find has less effect on browsing than both Avast and F-Secure. I never installed the browser toolbar they offered and I never installed the email scanner either but everything else is enabled. Only thing I don't like about AVG 8.x is the spam slide out banner every time I do a scan but considering it is free I can live with it.

First scan I did with ver. 8.x it claimed a WinAmp plugin I had installed was a trojan but I'm fairly certain it was a false-positive because ver. 7.x never detected it as such.
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To be honest EVERY single aspect of my pc, not just just web surfing, is faster without AVG. I didnt realize that even the older version was causing some pc sluggishness until I started running without any av at all. A lot of my complaints about Vista actually seem to be the fault of AVG. Im hesitate about installing any av now that my comp feels so responsive. :confused:
 
cannondale06 said:
To be honest EVERY single aspect of my pc, not just just web surfing, is faster without AVG. I didnt realize that even the older version was causing some pc sluggishness until I started running without any av at all. A lot of my complaints about Vista actually seem to be the fault of AVG. Im hesitate about installing any av now that my comp feels so responsive. :confused:
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For the sake of all that is worthwhile dump the bloated scanners

Avira AntiVir is awesome!!!!

it is FREE for personal use, it get a higher rate of detection than most, and it uses very little resources as it actively scans and will not slow down a mid-range rig. And it is customizable!!

Try it you will LOVE it!! .. and NEVER .. ever, run a computer connected to the net without up-to-date Virus protection. A firewall is useless for many virii

http://www.free-av.com/en/download/index.html

look for the free D/L ... it is highly recommended on other Tech forums and i use and recommend it to all my friends [who love it also]
 
cannondale06 said:
To be honest EVERY single aspect of my pc, not just just web surfing, is faster without AVG. I didnt realize that even the older version was causing some pc sluggishness until I started running without any av at all. A lot of my complaints about Vista actually seem to be the fault of AVG. Im hesitate about installing any av now that my comp feels so responsive. :confused:
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All AV software will cause a bit of slow down if you run it resident. They have quite a big impact on disk I/O performance because they scan every file you access that can contain a virus. That's why I have XP on another PC for just gaming on and don't run any AV on it in resident mode. I just scan files I download manually on it with AVG. On Vista I do run it resident though as that is my internet PC and I don't need top performance on it.
 
simple recommendation....use AVAST...I have used it on all of my PC's, running XP and Vista with no problems. I have recommended it to many people with no problems. It is updated regularly and the simple home version has protected each and every machine flawlessly. I'm not sure what the paid version does, but it is worth it to contribute some bucks to. NOD32 is supposed to be better and worth a very cheap cost.
 
Using Avast on Vista 64bit and its working flawlessly, even have the avast scanner set to come up with the aurora screen saver

Only complaint with that 3 sec pop up window telling me it updated is the voice, I would prefer it to be silent
 
I used to put AVG free on all the computers I work on, but I am somewhat disappointed with the footprint of AVG 8.0. I have since switched to Avira Antivir free and it is the best free solution available in my opinion. Very lightweight and good detection from the material I have read around on different sites. I highly recommend Antivir, and it has cleaned quite a few computers I have worked on recently.
 
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