So what anti-virus companies provide free scanning and removal?

It would seem that if you use a decent free A-V like Avast 5, Windows Defender or another active A-S and periodically scan with MB and e.g. NOD32, you end up with a setup that is probably 99.xx% as secure as a $30 paid setup. This isn't taking into account surfing sanboxed either. Until November 2009 I had been a NOD customer for over six years, but have now gone with a free one year a-squared license on the XP desktop and Avast on the Vista laptop. So far, so good! Back to the original question, do most of the major players now provide free scanning and removing?

 

Remember A vs. B is not allowed so let's not try to say one AV is better then another.

In general most only offer free scanning but not removal.

 

Not sure how you inferred A vs B? Any way, I only looked at Eset and it does state removal too.

 

I don't use any real-time security software at all. LUA, SRP and DEP and an IPCop firewall box does the trick. I do a scan every couple of weeks with Avira and/or Malwarebytes and AVZ and they never find anything. Saves a lot of system and financial resources.

The online scans that I know of that also remove are TrendMicro HouseCall, F-Secure and Bitdefender. Having seen another thread about Bitdefender chewing its way through all the system files, I would probably not use that one at the moment

Dr.Web Cure-it would also be a good alternative, as is AVZ.

 

Well, off the top of my head the free anti-virus programs that scan and remove are: In no particular order

Microsoft Security Essentials

Comodo

Rising Anti-virus

ClamWin

Avast!

Avira Antivir Personal

AVG

PC Tools

 

Good list. I think you got them all.

 

Panda

 

We need to stop posting threads with AV Comparatives/Tests then right?