Recommend: Real-time AV for Win7 Ultimate 32-bit

I'd like to add one to my setup at least until I have a better grasp on this OS and trust that I have it sufficiently locked down to the point of making one trivial (if possible). Or even keeping it indefinitely. Normally I don't like them and don't use them.

I want something simple and light... all I want is resident file scanning. No web scanning, cloud stuff, email and other protections. Is there even anything anymore nice and light like say for example the Avira Free's of old (circa versions 5-6)? I doubt it. Probably the closest I can come is a product with a dozen "shields" and have to disable 11 of them, leaving only the resident file scanning. But I'd love to be proven wrong.

Please don't let it turn into A vs. B comparisons as if this ends up locked it won't do me any good. And I know, mods out there, that there are a lot of threads about AV's and you may feel inclined to just say: "read them" and close this. But many of them are dated, and I'm asking with a certain criteria/approach tailored to my own needs in mind so that makes this request different... I hope you can allow it as long as we stick by the guidelines here.

Much appreciated.

 

Since you have yet to decide which AV to use, I would recommend installing MSE as a baseline first.

I am not going to touch on detection capabilities because that would be pretty obvious among Wilders crowd. Keyword: BASELINE.
Furthermore, MSE fits your criteria of being simple and resident file scanning only. The "light" part...you have to just see for yourself and see if it fits your definition. Of course, there are your usual free AV choices but those include way more features than you want...especially if you wish to avoid the "cloud stuff".

Pick your poison but since an AV is just a stopgap measure in your setup, you wouldn't want to waste too much time pondering over which one to use.

Back to locking down the system, there's EMET. In your case, you would also have Applocker (if not SRP) at your disposal. I would simply use allow/deny using path-based rules. Just search for MrBrian's posts on the subject as it would clear things up.

As for browser security...time to seriously take a look at Chrome. It's sandbox leverages Windows-provided security. You can easily beef it up with gorhill's extensions like uBlock and/or uMatrix for web-content control.

 

I would agree about MSE. It's free and light and signature based virus detection is way down the list of what really works as a security measure as far as I'm concerned. Using a LUA and locking it down with Applocker and hardened NTFS file permissions would do a lot more to make things secure. As would a good imaging app so any system corruption could be restored quickly. The built in Windows 7 imaging has always worked reliably for me but it is slow and the image files are large.

For browser security, default deny script blocking is the best approach. Default deny is always best in a general sense, not just in regards to javascript. Once javascript is limited, any browser is much more secure.

 

The recommendation of MSE is absurd at best. MSE consistently scores the worst in every category for proactive, real world, file detection, etc. tests by every testing agency on the planet. Sorry, but to actually recommend MSE is a total head-scratcher. MSE = epic fail. Period.

 

On the other hand, the Bitdefender freebie backed up with MBAM free--> for sure, the panacea of never having to pay for antivirus/anti-malware software ever again. Apparently, Bitdefender is so awesome it was worth the gamble for a certain vendor to cheat with via AV-Comparatives. Go figure.