Best Antivirus For Old Pc

Hi guys, my pc config is a Celeron 1.7GHZ, 768MB DDR...... Please help me find a reliable antivirus solution for my configuration.... Dont mention Kaspersky or ESET as i already tried both of em... Eset is good but it slows down opening of installation files [up to 30 sec], Kaspersky 2009 is **** as it doesnt detect some viruses, I used it for a month and when i ran a scan with Bitdefender it found up 20 viruses in my system + 17 spywares.... I dont want bitdefender[2009] as it drains my pc performance....... What antivirus would you recomment for the above said config?

 

Commercial Scanners ; AntiVir, Command, Dr Web, F-Prot, Twister, VBA32.

Free ; AntiVir.

All, IME, are relatively lightweight in real-time. But try and see.

 

You could also consider running an AV only as an on-demand scanner which would lessen the load in real-time.

You would then cover the bases with a Sandbox and/or a HIPS; both of which are generally much lighter than an AV Monitor.

 

Hello coolbuy.

Which OS ?
What other security software including firewall are you currently running ?

My first thoughts regarding what to recommend are either the aforementioned Antivir (Avira), or Avast.

Both are available as free or paid versions with the latter (especially in the case of Avira) offering additional features.

Some are bound to suggest AVG, but I'm pretty sure it uses more system resources.

 

Avira, Dr.Web or F-PROT

 

No Anti-virus has 100% detection because signature scanning will never keep up with the many constant threats.
I don't mean to sound rude, but Bitdefender finding all that Malware, which kaspersky apparently missed sounds to far fetched to me, sorry. If it did miss that many, then I suspect your configuration was set up incorrectly because you can tick what types of threats Kaspersky will find. You'll also find that some sercurity software will produce a long list of harmless tracking cookies, which Kaspersky will not waste it's time on.

As to your original question, Norton Anti-virus 2009 and Internet security 2009 are light on system resources, so good for fast and slower computers a like

 

Free : PC Tools AV, Comodo Internet Security, AntiVir

Paid: Norton Antivirus or Norton Internet security

 

Hello,
for kaspersky did you enable all the malware catogories found at settings, threats and exclusions,threats, settings?
thats the most common reason for kaspesky not detecting something.

 

May be i didn't , i dont know, i just used the default config that comes up with KIS 2009

 

default doesnt have all catogories ticked.
other malware is unticked as default.
this is also called riskware.

 

Your PC is not so old...
A successful setup for an ancient PIII 450 , 512mb ram, XP SP3 is
Comodo CIS (without antivirus) + Avast Antivirus

 

One of of my older PC's has less resources than that and agree you have to be careful with AV as it can kill performance . Something like Panda 2008 was almost impossible to run. Avira ran smoothly, as did NOD32 and KIS for me but the lightest with least impact, fastest surfing, file opening etc was Norton 2009. If you go with the IS you get firewall etc also with very limited system impact. I know it's not for everyone but if it's performance on an old machine you want it would be worth a try.

 

I wonder if that's a dual core processor ?

Seriously:

Get a good imaging system, make images frequently or back up programs/data, use some virtualization software for accessing the internet like sandboxie (make sure you know its limitations, so that nothing can 'jump out of the box') and/or a very lightweight AV. I could suggest AVG, it's probably not very good but at least it has signatures and it recently was in the news because it removed one or more Windows files !

 

You may as well say every anti virus is sh** then as they all miss some malware.

 

After your other posts in other threads regarding Avira, I would say your top priority should be a complete reformat first. After that's done, take an image, and then go ahead and install something like Avast, it does well on older machines. Avira might even work right then too....

 

Avast should run fine on your rig. Not bad for a freebie.