axb006

I'm using "avest!" antivirus freeware and it seems to be pretty goood. I don't like that it's over 60mb, which was more than Norton IS 2008. The only other thing I don't like is that I had to download a seperate SSO freware app (RoboForm).

Is there anything better out there for freeware?

Glaswegian

Hi

See if any of the suggestions here help

PC Safety and Security--What Do I Need?

lebronjeff

use AVG dude..dont believe to other people that AVG is sucks...in terms of free AVG is the most complete anti virus trust me

by the way i use kasperksy AV..

Blast

Yeah, AVG is really good. Spybot S & D also pwns.

Also try Emsisoft A-Sqaured. It does heuristics scans. AVG and Emsisoft is like the best pair. Those 2 (i also have spybot though) have made my computer an antivirus tank. AVG scans the basics and pops up when a virus activates and Emsisoft is just a hardcore scanner finding many things AVG misses.

Angelfire777

For some people, yes, AVG8 sucks. That is because AVG8 is now known to create a lot of issues in a machine. Some, as worse as making a machine unbootable. I have seen a few logs where no malware was present and yet the user complains of slowness, etc. Cure: uninstall AVG8 and all was ok again.

As far as detections go, for a freeware, I guess it's ok. But freeware like Antivir can match and surpass the detections of paid ones.

Spybot is ok too but it is now lagging in detections and removal capability, just like adaware. They were good before but malware just evolves so fast and most of them skip past these two softwares.

I don't know much about a-squared but it is known for false positives.

I'm not discouraging their use..Just an FYI.

Mr No Name...

Hi,

AVG 7.0 and 7.5 were both great however the new AVG (AVG 8.0) is completly different.

Ive installed it on a few machines with different results (its a very buggy piece of software). the main resident process can creep up to 46,000 in main memory, which is way to large if u ask me, avast! is about 18,000.

also it seems to be very heavy on CPU usage (the process avgrsx.exe) during bootup, all systems which ive installed it on would hang while this process seems to do a memory scan before startup (not the optional bootup scan listed under settings)

on the machines that it didnt install correctly i found that sometimes the machine would boot up way faster than others. i found that the resident scanner (real-time protection) wouldnt always start. the avg main menu would tell me that the scanner was running however when looking into it further i could see that avgrsx.exe sometimes had a 0 for cpu activation time (about 40 when it starts correctly) , and was only about 4,000 in main memory (coincidently thesame as if you manually turn resident protection off) when this happens AVG does not scan actively when opening programs like word, IE etc


due to AVG 8 i have switched to Avast! 4.8 which seems to work much better (although i hate the default skin and had to turn "skin mode" off to get a user friendly interface)


it seems a real shame as AVG 7.5 was a truely great piece of software and by far the best anti-virus, AVG 8.0 reminds me way way to much of mcafee (bad times :p)

before switching to avast i tried out a number of anti-virus programs (free ones and trials)

Avast 4.8 is definately better (although less visually appealing) then AVG 8.0

peterlakey

I use Avira Antivir free - it works well . Also use Superantispyware for malware - also free and good . Get Comodo free firewall too . I've tried paid ones - norton , bitdefender etc but i trust Avira totally . XP 512mb ram by emachines . Cheers . Peter Lakey

peterlakey

By the way , I ran AVG 7.5 for a while . Avira found 3 detections that AVG had let go . Be happy . . . Peter Lakey

sobeit

there is not one antivirus software thats 100 percent perfect and that includes both free or commercial. Free antivirus software has its limitations and lack features thats found it the retail version. In addition, some free software will only allow you to install it in one computer per household and thats it.

That said, I have used both avg and avast. Both worked great and I would recommend either to anyone who wants to use free antivirus software.

Mr No Name...

after your suggestion of Avira AntiVir Free I decided to give it a try...

ive decided to stick with it, it seems to work really well. im having a few problems with it taking a while to update on my laptop, but its much faster and less resource heavy then both avast and the new avg.

i also like its interface (after a tweek to stop it showing the advert and the splash screen at startup)

thanks for the suggestion :)

sjb007

Antivir does tend to be a bit laggy due to the servers it uses for updating when updating but IMHO its worth the wait. The paid version of antivir uses the premium servers which is one of the advantages if you did decide to move up a level to paid solutions.

SNAG

Avast....the best.

Crespo PC Serv

AVG, has been good for me. I use it for protection and it does the job. But when I want to make sure I don't have anything i always go with Bitdefender Online.

koala

Can you tell me how to remove the advert? (as long as it's legal)

The only annoying thing about Avira is the huge adverts that appear after every update. I'll put up with it as it's a good quality free program, better than any other free antivirus I've used, but it would be nice to get rid of the ads if possible.

tetonbob

Removing the splashscreen is just a registry tweak

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run]
"avgnt"="C:\Program Files\Avira\AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic\avgnt.exe" /min /nosplash

Not sure about the adverts.

koala

Thanks, Bob. I very rarely reboot or restart Avira, so I don't get to see the splash screen too often. It's the ads I'd like to remove if possible, but I can understand how they would make this more difficult considering it's a free product. No worries, thanks anyway.

Mr No Name...

Its Pretty Simple

http://www.tipsfor.us/2007/08/15/mak...n-more-usable/

makes the program much better :)