Best Free AV!?

Yep!

I also use one of your programs and waiting for another...

 

Actually Avast was more close to NOD than NOD was behind AVIRA in the latest Av-Comparatives On-Demand test against nasties added AFTER the 08-2006 test. Not bad at all.

Best regards,
Firefighter!

Btw, my younger son, soon 20 yrs old, doesn't listen to me at all, has used Avast about two years without any infections. According to him I'm already a mummy. Hmm!

 

I agree.
AVIRA has made a huge improvements, but its free version doesn't detect spyware/adware, doesn't have e-mail support and their servers are very slow...

Maybe he knows what to do to avoid them...

 

I agree with most of the other posters. Avira or Avast free. You might like to add Bitdefender free or Dr. Web's Cure-It as an on-demand AV program. Just don't load it simultaneously with Avira or Avast (In other words make sure the services of your resident AV are stopped and it's autoruns temporarily disabled when you run the on-demand AV program).

Just a thought. Why get the free program when some manufacturers offer their
programs free after rebate, like Kaspersky is doing right now with Kaspersky Internet Security. This would allow you to use it if for a competitive upgrade a year from now should you decide to switch to a different pay AV program.

PS - There's also a free F-Protect DOS AV program that can run at bootup or in safe mode. This would be also excellent as a 2nd option.

http://www.f-prot.com/products/home_use/dos/

 

you dont have to disable any security when running the cure it utility, this is part of its genius.

 

Cureit scans much quicker if you disable your resident AV, if you don't your resident AV will scan every file that your cureit scans, your computer is effectively running two virus scans at the same time.

 

you sure about this?

cureit never scanned any quicker when ive tried other products, such as f-secure, avg, trend and bitdefender.

 

It might be helpful if before you install, you download the last freeware version of Martau's "Total Uninstall". I think it's version 2.35.

Another great program is Zsoft's "Uninstall" which is free and can be found here:

http://www.zsoft.dk/index.php?goto=software_details&prog_id=4

It creates a log of all the files and registry strings installed by any program it monitors. When you're ready to uninstall, you can use the program's uninstaller and then Zsoft's to get all the initial strings and errant files that were installed. It's also great for seeing what each program does to a registry - even those that have no setup.exe file and just run after unzipping.

 

Are you sure? If so, that's great to know. Do you mean that when it's not running, there are no dll's loading with explorer.exe at bootup and there are no startup entries at all?

 

Wouldn't that also mean that an AV program would be scanning every file that a
anti-spyware program scans, too? It would be interesting to see what the sysinternal utility logs from Process Monitor, Disk Monitor and Regmon would look like. I have a feeling you are correct, though. Most AV programs are on the alert every time any file is opened or scanned.

 

no nothing runs apart from the scanner itself.

no install, no boot up rubbish, no registry entries etc etc.

 

For me Antivir is the best - not that I ever get to see any viruses.

 

me neither now,

i rarely see viruses now, very rare.... i just kinda have a problem with phishing emails, get them almost daily now. *lol*

 

I see trojans at least 4 days a week...some of them undetected

 

Any resident AV will scan whatever cureit or some antispyware app touches, before cureit/antispyware gets access to the file. That's the whole point of an AV resident/guard scanner, they intercept the file system calls and block access for any application to the file until they have confirmed it is clean.

And you certainly don't have to delete any registry keys or autostarts, that is rubbish. Deactivate the on-access component. If your AV doesn't have that option, get a better AV since all top products offer the possibilty to deactivate the on-access component. Or, as is the case with some AVs you can exclude specific processes from getting their file access intercepted (see i.e. antivir configuration for process exclusion)

 

It doesn't seem like this applies to the scan engine of the same product, this seems to apply only if an on-demand scanner using a different engine touches some file. For example, I don't see my AVG real-time monitor picking up something when I am running an on-demand scan while leaving the guard enabled (even if the on-demand scanner actually picks up malware).

How does it work in such a case, then?

 

How ? what are you doing ? So many on this site seem to have all the fun. Trojans at least 4 days a week ? are you serious ? I have to work at getting slightly naughty cookies and then Firefox deletes them when I close. I really am impressed . If I saw a Trojan even once every year or so I might run some real time security but as it is no program I have ever installed has ever managed to find anything more dangerous than a couple of false positives.

 

Of course most AVs exclude their own on-demand scanners from getting intercepted, they would be stupid to slow themselves down for nothing and scanning every file twice....

But they certainly won't do it for the dozens of other security products.

 

Right now I have hundreds of samples with me. If it goes on at this rate the hundreds may soon become thousands.

Anyway, 4 days is an approximation. Depending on how much I look (and ask) for it, I get that much samples. So if I decide to spend a week playing games instead of visiting forums, I'd hardly have any samples with me. A very good friend of mine (pykko) sends me samples very frequently. Keeps me busy.

@FRug: Thanks for the explanation, it is appreciated.

 

Likewise here, after 9 months of use no viruses or spyware have got past it and not one spam E-Mail received.

Contrary to what the comparison linked to above says I find it lighter on resources than Avast, typically using between 3MB and 10MB of RAM.

with updates typically every 2 hours and the option to 'scan only new or changed files' which reduces the scan time to a few minutes + scheduled scans available it's definitely my favourite A/V, free or otherwise.

 

F-prot dos can't scan files of NTFS...i mean, he can catch only a few files, so its not worthy to use that scanner