Best, free antivirus?

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londonandlawson

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Aug 25, 2006
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I am about to do a reinstall of Vista and I have been using avg free for years. Do you recommend anything different?
 
Yes..by all means..get away from AVG, go to AntiVir
It's lighter, and has a far superior detection rate. AVG has been "middle of the pack" detection for a few years now.

Avast is also much better in detection, although it's a bit heavy on your system.
 
Search is your friend!!!!

That said Antivir hands down.

av-comparatives.org for information on all anti-viruses out there.
 
Another vote for Avira over AVG. I made the switch late last year when AVG went to v8. Avira is really nice.
 
After a year with NOD32, I went to the free version of Avira. No issues thus far. The ad is annoying but can be removed
 
Avast! just because someone will always chime in with Avast.

I use Avira, though.
 
I use Avast currently and used AVG prior. Avast picked up stuff that AVG didn't.
 
At this moment, it's Avira, period. AV-Comparatives testing puts it firmly at the top of their list in terms of free AV packages, so it's nearly impossible to beat. There's a way to get the Premium Edition for 6 months free floating around also, I think there was a thread in the Hot Deals subforum here with the details.
 
Another for Avast! home edition. I'm actually looking at moving over to their professional edition for my 140 clients at work, pretty amazing stuff IMO
 
+3 on Avast! Free Home Edition, works great for me on Vista x64.

I tried AntiVir, and couldn't handle the annoying popup ads about upgrading to professional version.
 
Using Antivir,have been using it since version 6.

Nothing better for free,period. You can disable the "nag screen" as well.
 
Been using Avira on Vista 64 for a couple weeks. I game mostly (on a MacBook Pro) and haven't noticed any impact. Checking in Task Manager I can see that it's using around 10MB of RAM. I'd highly recommend it.

Haven't tried Avast before but would certainly be willing to give it a shot, as long as it's super low impact.
 
I use and am a fan of Avast, I don't think it's high on resources. Keep in mind Avast also offers network, web, P2P, instant messaging and e-mail scanning/monitoring, AntiVir doesn't, which might be why AntiVir is lower on resources.

Also, you have to decided, do you want better detection rates with no network, web, or e-mail scanner or other scanners included? Something has to be scanned/monitored in the first place to be detected. Or do you want a lower detection rate(although Avast's detection rates are good) with those scanners included? Avast also offers spyware protection as well.

It's a trade-off, both are very good, one with better detection rates but less scanners, the other with more scanners lower detection rates.

And before the AntiVir fans attempt to shit on the the network, web, and e-mail scanning and other features of Avast, I think for the average person they're good features to have. The user can disable most of Avast's scanners if they don't want to use them. Obviously certain scanners only start up when you're using certain applications...like e-mail, P2P and instant messaging for example.
 
number69 said:
Also, you have to decided, do you want better detection rates with no network, web, or e-mail scanner or other scanners included? Something has to be scanned/monitored in the first place to be detected. Or do you want a lower detection rate(although Avast's detection rates are good) with those scanners included? Avast also offers spyware protection as well.
.
Click to expand...

"Sales talk" to give people a more warm 'n fuzzy feeling IMO. Web/email/network is still protected with real time protection. Either the defintions will pick it up, or they won't IMO it's just a warm 'n fuzzy feeling to "think" that it gets picked up one further layer away...on port 80 or port 110 or port 25, rather than when the file gets written further into RAM.

Real Time file protection is the bottom line, and AntiVir has that (as do almost all windows antivirus programs except clamwin AFAIK).

Spyware....I've seen, numerous times, AntiVir free find infections and remove them from systems that were supposedly protected by Avast. Always leads me to think the "added spyware protection" module is just another sales pitch.

I'm an Eset user myself, but in cleaning infested computers...I use whatever tools are available to me, and work the fastest and most complete. I have Avast on my thumbdrive..but found I don't use it at all, when AntiVir does a more complete job.

Year ago I did my free jobs with AVG..then it went downhill, and I switched to Avast for all my home jobs. But..so many users..with all sorts of various horsepower rigs..complained about the machine being slow, painfully long bootup/login times with Avast...so I switched to AntiVir. They loved having speed back. And oddly enough, AntiVir would start spitting up alerts about infections that Avast never bothered with.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
"Sales talk" to give people a more warm 'n fuzzy feeling IMO. Web/email/network is still protected with real time protection. Either the defintions will pick it up, or they won't IMO it's just a warm 'n fuzzy feeling to "think" that it gets picked up one further layer away...on port 80 or port 110 or port 25, rather than when the file gets written further into RAM.
Click to expand...

Not really, i've seen many people get nailed by drive by infections who were using a respected AV without network/web scanning. That may have been the fault of their AV for not having good detection rates, maybe not. I'd rather the program tell a user a .exe or other files are infected while it's being downloaded and they cancel it or the program cancels it, especially with malformed .js or other malicious scripting in web pages, that's just me. I've seen AV's fail once a .exe or other files have been executed even when they say it blocked it from running...damage still got done. Same goes for the e-mail scanner IMO better to have than not for the average person.

I've installed Avast on a ton of machines with varying horsepower(including my own rigs), I think it's decent on resources...by far better than many other AVs i've installed. I don't have the painfully slow bootup times, not even on a old PIII 866 rig I have here.

I also use many different AVs to remove infections. I'm not saying Avast is the best because it's not I just happen to think it's a very good free product as is AntiVir. There is no denying that AntiVir has very good detection rates.

We all know you can't really count on one product when it comes to removing malware once it's infected your system. Damn, I had a customer's rig recently where A-Squared picked up stuff that AntiVir didn't.





Edit. fixed my typos.
 
I have used all the AV's out there pretty much and they all find things the other can't. I had AVG free and that failed to detect a virus I directly scanned first. I then ran the exe and i got so pwned. I switched to NOD32 and that was fine till it failed me with a virus/malware install from some random torrent. I then switched to Anti-Viir. That failed me when I attempted to visit a packetnews just recently, I got infected with a lot of malware I couldn't remove and all I did was visit the site. I am now running the new AVG with Windows 7.

This has happened over a span of 4 years or so, therefore version upgrades may very well be a variable to consider. And no I'm not spending all my time on pr0n sites. It's just over the years, that's what I have found. Sometimes a new version of something will detect some months/years old install file I had laying around in my archive as a virus.

I basically, use one till it fails me then I find whatever is the latest version of the most popular one. I have yet to use Avira or Avast and from what I hear I might start using it. I kow Avast is compitabile with Wiindows 7 so I might try that first. I do find that visiting TrendMicro's Housecall and Bitdefender's online scans to work well. They both catch stuff that even Malbytes Malware remover and Spybot 1.6 can't find/fix.

So, in the end, there is no one-all solution. Avira might be it going by what I have been hearing as of late so that is something to look into.
 
How do you stop Avira from repeatedly warning me about the same fucking file(s) when I set it ignore them?

-k thanks.
 
Seriously, that advertising and update popup always hits me in the worst times, especially when I'm gaming. Makes me rage.
 
Avira paid is awesome, but the free is just ok IMO. Avast is the best for free IMO.
 
Oh, apologies I thought your prior post was a sort of joke. But yeah, for some reason I'm having troubles finding that option to disable it.
 
I've been using avast for a while on my vista machine, I like it so far... Wanted to try something else, been using NOD32 for quite some time.
 
But free Avira doesn't have web browser protection and free Avast and AVG does.
 
Klob said:
But free Avira doesn't have web browser protection and free Avast and AVG does.
Click to expand...

I have Avira on my mom's computer, and she uses Firefox already, and she doesn't visit shady sites... does web protection really matter?

Doesn't Google already warn you if a link is a threat?
 
AV-Comparatives has Avira AntiVir on top, and its the lightest on your system. What more could you possibly want?
 
Klob said:
But free Avira doesn't have web browser protection and free Avast and AVG does.
Click to expand...

Real time file protection still stops it....I've had friends who use Avira tell me it stopped an install from happening on their system via their browser.

IMO that "browser protection" or "IM protection" is fluffed sales pitches. Technically the system may be able to detect something further out on the port level..but in the end, it's all about if your AV can detect it..and stop it...either way, it's still hitting your RAM.
 
I don't want to get into an argument over anti-virus. Lord knows we see enough of that as it is. I like Antivir and NOD both. Some mention the AV Comparatives test saying that Antivir is currently the best. Well technically Antivir had the highest detection rate, but it also had a higher rate of false positive detection than NOD did. As a result technically NOD won the test back in December even though its detection rate was not quite as good as Antivir. Certainly not worth arguing about but something I wanted to mention.
Sometimes someone will bring in their personal pc for cleanup. If they don't have AV I put Antivir on it and disable the startup splash screen and the ad popup. Easily done with a google search.
 
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