Free anti-virus software?

I know of AVG, AntiVir, and Avast. Are there any other popular free anti-virus programs? Which of those would you recommend? The lighter (in terms of memory usage) the better. Thanks!

 

ClamAV is waiting for you.

 

And AOL ActiveVirusShield too, basically just a stripped down version of KAV 6 which has only a real-time monitor (File AV) and mail scanner.

 

You can get some free antivirus programs thru MicroSoft for a certain amount of time.The link is below.

I would rather use Avira AntiVir PE Classic.It's free and has very good detection rates.It doesn't have a mail scanner though.

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/downloads/default.mspx

 

yea,and i think it is enough for home user

 

Computer Associates Etrust Antivirus is free from the microsoft website.

 

Avira AntiVir or AOL:s Active Virus Shield are my recommendations. The "limitations" of the these apps that contains "only" a filescanner and maybe an e-mailscanner, is enough since most malware are often hidden in installation packages or in compressed files, so then you won´t find the malware until it activates in memory. Webscanners/e-mailscanners just slows down your connection...

Regards, C.

 

AntiVir or AVG. Try them and see which you prefer.

 

Of the free av's, I have used Antivir and AVG, my preference would be AVG.

 

The three you know all are good ones. I wouldn't suggest ClamAV though

 

AVS has one great thing. It crashes whole bunch of programs (still!).
I don't know what the hell are they doing. Tried version 6.0.308 and it still crashes FEAR Combat. Very lame... avast! + Cyberhawk ftw...

 

Use one of them as main scanner and use all the rest as on-demand scanners.
What one scanner doesn't remove, might be removed by the others.
That's how the scanner world works. They cover eachother : teamwork !!!

 

I loved AOL AVS, but recent possible CHKDSK problems had me go back to Antivir temporarily, which is tops in my book. I do however, now use AVG Free 7.5 simply becuase I like the GUI, and believe it is getting better in detection as claimed. That in conjunction with Comodo Firewall, and along with either Spyware Terminater or Cyberhawk for surfing on FireFox, is enough protection I feel for my general safe internet practices. As I have used all the free ones, including CA Antivirus 2007, it just boiled down to which one felt more comfortable for me to use and finally keep. So far, the new AVG Free has done this, but if for some reason I would switch again, Antivir is now my close second favorite, and the only other Free AV I would use at this point.

 

i would advise eiether antivir classic or active virus shield the kav free version.

 

Thanks for the suggestions everyone!

 

Well, you can see what I use in my sig. below. I removed AVS it is good stuff protection wise but I believe it was slowing my machine response time. Clearly on login AVG comes up much quicker. I'll stay the way I am now for a while as I am a low risk user and have not had any infection in a long, long time.

 

I think I'm gonna go with AntiVir and AVG for now.

I had installed Avast on another computer not long ago, and it was kinda annoying. One time it downloaded an update and then popped up a little dialog box asking me if I wanted to reboot, and I clicked No. Most programs will just ask you once and they don't do it again... but Avast asked me several times. And tonight it just stopped working... it said I needed to register for a license key. I'd rather not have a program whose operation gets interrupted every X number of months.

I also checked out the web site for AOL AVS, and wasn't too comfortable with the licensing agreement, so I'll pass on that. Hopefully the combination of AntiVir and AVG can make up for what I'll miss by not having the Kaspersky engine.

 

"Hopefully the combination of AntiVir and AVG can make up for what I'll miss by not having the Kaspersky engine."


Oy you can have Antivir real-time protection and Bitdefender Free as on demand scanning to double check to make sure everything is clean.

 

Also, for a good second opinion scanner, you can download the Dr.Web CureIt utility at www.freedrweb.com, it detects and cleans, all for free.