Suggestions for Free AntiVirus for Really Old Computer

[Ken7]

Guys,

I have a really old computer from 2000 that I just got back online with one GB of ram with windows XP. It's just a spare for some light duty.

What free AV choices would be good to put on that machine. It doesn't have to be anything great as long as its light on resources.

Thanks

[RJK3]

If any of the following are true:

1/ You're behind a router than blocks all incoming traffic
2/ You can trust all computers on your local network
3/ You have Sandboxie

Then you can get away with having no AV IMO.

Just make an backup image of the system, and at worse you can just format and restore the backup image. e.g. Macrium Reflect, Clonezilla, etc.

Keep it up to date, don't install Java or Adobe PDF, and do regular scans with MBAM/HMP and see how easy it can be to go without an AV.

[Ken7]

Thanks...Sounds like a good plan

[Montmorency]

Originally Posted by Ken7

Thanks...Sounds like a good plan

It is.

[Amin]

confirming what RJK3 said , i also add that using Autorun virus remover can help you not get infected from USB sticks. it's very effective. I'm not sure if there is free version.

Regards,
Amin

[cheater87]

For USB protection get Panda USB Vaccine.

[Dark Shadow]

Just to add if you install sandboxie go in the sandboxie settings and select delete - invocation and check the box auto delete sandboxie contents.Also under restricitions - select Drop my rights and check that box.This will provide greater protection and privacy.

[Feandur]

Ken7

One of my 'puters is a very old Intel Celeron 130um Northwood CPU with a Gigabyte 8VD667K [socket 478] ...but I did install extra RAM to bring it up to 2Gig as I found 1 GIG just a little too stifling! Definitely worth doing.

Any-ho.....I'm just running Defense Wall Personal Firewall.

Nothing else.

http://www.softsphere.com/

Agreed - it's not free, but well worth while.

[No definitions to constantly download, and running rock solid, and with very little impact or system slowdown].

Agreed - Ilya recommends running other security [an AV] with it, but really it's all you need for light use.

I just run scanners on demand only.

Just my experience, and my 2 Cents worth..

-feandur

[Amit]

Sandboxie
Spyshelter or if you want a firewall with hips- Comodo Firewall/D+
HitmanPro
Malwarebytes Antimalware
KeePass
Macrium Reflect
Norton ConnectSafe
KeePass

All are free and are all you need to stay protected. Really you can go Av less with this setup and a little safe surfing.

But if you're really hanging on to the AV system, then I would recommend Avast. My second suggestion would be Roboscan IS.

[dane01]

Avast Free Antivirus is running fine in just 256 MB of RAM on my two Acer Aspire 1412 notebook computers from 2004.
Both use Windows XP SP3, and have as few programs installed as possible.
An Avast update may take a couple of minutes, with some disk activity (pagefile). It is possible to watch Internet TV during an update, but I usually wait for the update to complete first.
Since you have a whole gigabyte of RAM, Avast should run without problems on your computer, too.

[Chuck57]

An old Dell Dimension, Pentium 4, 3.2Ghz here, upgraded to 2G RAM and Vista

I'm running Zonealarm's free AV and firewall and except for a tiny bit slower loading and shutting down, it's light and fast.

[DX2]

Comodo, one of the lightest out there.

[RejZoR]

I've installed avast! on such system. It was a COMPAQ workstation, single core P4 2,4GHz, 1GB RAM, 40GB HDD and integrated Intel graphics. It works fairly well, you just have to make a full system scan to really boost the performance (for cache to kick in).

[mack_guy911]

one on demand scanner like malware byte or hitman pro .......or cloude scanner they very light (no impact on system resources by default)

2nd norton netconnect DNS (no impact on system resources)

3rd sandboxie

more than enough like all others said too

[RejZoR]

They all say that cloud AV's don't have any impact on performance, but reality is very different...

[twl845]

I bought a new DELL WIN7 64x computer and retired my 6 year old DELL XP computer to the spare room. It runs better today than when I bought it, but I have no reason to run it on line. It has 1GB RAM and can't handle today's software. Therefore I stripped it of the AV, firewall, and anti spyware, and use it as a local computer.

[kdcdq]

Let me add my $.02 worh:

I recently installed Webroot SecureAnywhere Essentials on a 1GB RAM Atom-powered netbook, and it is the ONLY AV product I tried that did not slow the computer down to a crawl; this computer is slow enough already.

[The Hammer]

PCAV 2.0

[trjam]

Bkav has a free version of their AV and it is very good.

[kerykeion]

Had a Sempron PC with 512 MB RAM, Avast Free AV was fine on it, I also applied SRP in it.

[culla]

xp 512ram msi no problems

[blasev]

wont you consider some linux distro?
it would be my first choice for old machine

[sg09]

Originally Posted by trjam

Bkav has a free version of their AV and it is very good.

Is it light?

[luciddream]

Originally Posted by RJK3

If any of the following are true:

1/ You're behind a router than blocks all incoming traffic
2/ You can trust all computers on your local network
3/ You have Sandboxie

Then you can get away with having no AV IMO.

I would add a few more things:

- Are you a safe/knowledgeable end user that doesn't click on/download everything you see?

- Do you have other people/kids in your house that will, if not you?

- Do you use Firefox with NoScript, and only allow 1'st party scripts when absolutely necessary?

... if the answers to those things are also yes, then definitely go with Sandboxie and forget a real-time AV.

Otherwise, I'd recommend installing CIS, the full suite. Very light, and you get an excellent outbound FW and HIPS to boot. I run an old Dell Dimension 3000 with 1 GB of RAM and a 2.4 ghz Celeron CPU... so I can relate. And it flies with what I have listed in my sig. Though I don't use the AV, I hear (from people I trust) there's barely any noticeable difference between using the full suite or just the FW & D+.

I used to run Avira Free too and it was very light, though that was over a year ago and a lot can change in that span.

[RejZoR]

Forget about CIS, it's horribly slow. At least for now. This may change with CIS 6 though.

You may also want to try Kingsoft Cloud 2012, it's ridiculously light, even lighter than avast! from my experience...