good free anti virus

joemorris86 · 24 Jan 2008 at 15:34

hey, ive been looking through the sticky with the free anti viruses, but have no idea which one is any good, can anyone reccoment one plz?

or is it worth just spending the £15 and ordering the new norton oem?

.walls · 24 Jan 2008 at 15:39

Avast gets +1 from me. For personal use, it's free - but they sell it for corporate use.

Don't get Norton - most Symantec products suck (well... the products are usually great when Symantec buy them, but get very sucky after a new release or two...)

Margaret · 24 Jan 2008 at 15:49

Avast.

Norton sucks, I uninstalled it on my parents laptop and wow, it was like a new machine, much quicker to boot up.

I slapped Avast on their laptop too, it's still running speedy.

prescott28 · 24 Jan 2008 at 15:53

AVG let trojans onto my machine so I am not happy with that. I have decided to get the Kaspersky Internet Security (about £11 something at Overclockers) as I can't afford to lose data. I am on my free month trial at the moment until someone picks the thing up from Stoke inn a week or so's time. This is AV, firwall and other tools that install easily and don't get in the way.

markyb · 24 Jan 2008 at 15:56

Jihad said:
Avast.

Agreed. Great light AV which I've been using for years now.

kidloco · 24 Jan 2008 at 16:01

another vote for AVAST, I tried AVG and it let nasties through !

joemorris86 · 24 Jan 2008 at 16:02

avast seems to be popular, think i will try that.

i know its a bit off topic, but does anyone think i need a firewall if im using the windows built in one aswell as the one that comes with my router?

WotDa · 24 Jan 2008 at 16:02

Ever since the AntiVir thread, I've hardly seen it mentioned. So, I'm popping in to say that it scored higher than both of the above suggestions in a test. (Results can be found in the thread I'm not going to search for)

markyb · 24 Jan 2008 at 16:04

joemorris86 said:
avast seems to be popular, think i will try that.

i know its a bit off topic, but does anyone think i need a firewall if im using the windows built in one aswell as the one that comes with my router?

I used to use Sygate Personal Firewall 5.6 **I think** which was free. With Vista I just use the Windows standard one. Seems to be fine.

Solaris · 24 Jan 2008 at 16:05

Another vote for avast here...

markyb · 24 Jan 2008 at 16:09

I have to say Avast has been a solid AV in the past. Helped a friend out who had a virus which edited all of his .exe files to add an extra 1k making the file unreadable.

He used Avast!'s standalone removal tool program in safemode and repaired 600+ infected files. Rebooted and worked perfectly.

iviv · 24 Jan 2008 at 16:17

If you are going to pay, look no further than NOD32.

DanMc07 · 24 Jan 2008 at 17:53

iviv said:
If you are going to pay, look no further than NOD32.

or kaspersky. Prefer that Kasp myself.

Go for avast, its a solid free Av.

Mr Blonde · 24 Jan 2008 at 18:13

iviv said:
If you are going to pay, look no further than NOD32.

I lost a little bit of faith 6 months a go when something got past my nod32. I've been on Avira free ever since and am pleased with it.

jbloggs · 24 Jan 2008 at 20:07

I have tried a few free ones, of those that I have tried I have found Avast the best...

taz488 · 24 Jan 2008 at 20:34

nod32 changes all your .exe's into un-usable files what a mess that was

WotDa · 24 Jan 2008 at 20:35

Mr Blonde said:
I've been on Avira free ever since and am pleased with it.

Just make sure you rename the notifier that pops up and it's fine.

Low resource use and quick scans, better than AVG and Avast imo.

rctneil · 24 Jan 2008 at 21:19

go for kaspersky. It's excellent and worth the small fee.

MumboJumbo · 24 Jan 2008 at 21:57

WotDa said:
Just make sure you rename the notifier that pops up and it's fine.

Low resource use and quick scans, better than AVG and Avast imo.

how do i get rid of that annoying popup/

I tryed downloading the premium avast or what ever and it had a virus in it which avira picked up lol.

WotDa · 24 Jan 2008 at 22:12

8igdave said:
how do i get rid of that annoying popup/

http://www.ghacks.net/2006/07/16/how-to-disable-the-ad-popup-in-antivir/

Should work in Vista.