What's the best free AV?

Two of your friends use Norton AV, and they have never seen a virus. Hey, thats good, i will buy that. But come to Wilders, and take a look at some of the posts concerning this AV, and you will know what many users think of this, and you might make another choice. Thats what it´s all about, i think.

 

This post was and is about the best free AV in everyones opinion. Not a "I checked the reviews and I thing AVG is thew best becuase of the reviews" type of post. I just want to know what everyone thought of the best free AV. This post wasn't a post for people to bicker about what this post is for. There really isn't much Free avs to look at and say which best in your own opinion.

 

If you talked about free A/v then I think it's AVAST! Home Edition antivirus... its the best I have ever known. It has many features not found on other A/V... best of all it has WebShield and Network Shield that acts like an invisible firewall to protect us even more from viruses and worms etc...

 

Any new opinions on this subject? (seeing as how this thread is a year old, except for sweater's post)

Also I'm wondering if having spywareguard and Zone Alarm running would cause problems for an AV prog.

One other thing, it seems I might have a problem with coolwwwsearch as occasionally ZA is catching a connection attempt (routed to 127~, loopback right?), any recommendations on dealing with that? I ran spysweeper 3.5 without success. Currently I'm using a cloned backup that hasn't had spysweeper installed.

 

jon123, for ur first question, there shouldnt be ay problems. for coolwebsearch, download teh cwshredder utility and run it. also use spybot s&d and run the immunization and also scan using it.

anyways for me, avast home is my preferred free AV. it offer plenty of options and cool modules like the http-scanner. the detection rates arent half bad either.

 

I've tried all of them in my days.
AntiVir with their "Luke filewalker".. It's probably a good antivirus app, but I find it very hard to consider them as a serious company just because they use that in their scanner.

AVG is sweet - Sad news is, they still use this very old interface and thei detection rate has been dropping like crazy over the past year. This was infact my favorite free AV at the time.

Avast! is a nice AV-program too, but the 'skin' feature made me thin they were just like Antivir - A group of un-serious AV developers. Now it's a different story. Avast! has evolved alot to be one of the most popular free AV's out there, and I really like it, but it has limitations - It's good enough for the average user with the slider settings, but a more experienced user will look for something else.

My 2c

 

cwshredder, best place to donload?
ty guys

I found this site which recommends using PepiMKs tool...

"There is a variant of the Coolwebsearch trojan spreading that closes several anti-spyware apps when you try to open them.
If this is happening to you, download PepiMK's CoolWWWSearch.SmartKiller removal tool first and run it. After it does its job, CWShredder and HijackThis will run properly (as well Spybot S&D, Ad-aware and several anti-spyware forums)."

 

this is teh right link

 

I use AntiVIr

 

Re: What's the best free AV? & coolwwwsearch

Have posted in "Other Security Issues"

ok update to my coolwwsearch prob.

ran f-prot for dos with updates and full options (was not slow btw)-nadda

ran Pepi's smartkiller, older version though for cool~ v1 and v2-nadda
ran cwshredder-nadda

installed avast free and ran-nadda

have had one more instance of ZA catching outbound destination coolwwsearch

will of course try latest smartkiller, is there any diff. to prog?
what else might I try?
-I left Tea Timer running S&Dv1.3 (does the 1.4dl now include latest engine and det. files?)
I also wonder if MS sec updates for 98 might be causing issue for any of these progs.

 

Who's that strange looking guy in profile smoking a joint?

 

alternatives to free avg

http://www.clamwin.com/ <<clamwin
http://www.avast.com/eng/down_home.html <<avast
http://www.free-av.com/ <<antivir

 

Hi,

I have been a long time user of AVG Free adition and have been pleased.

bryankr

 

Before making a choice, I ask myself some questions, some of the questions are;

• Detection rate
• Features offered
• Technical Support availability
• Product Popularity

It may seem I’m especially choosy, when some may think you shouldn’t when using Freeware, but I believe that I should not be mislead, and giving me a false sense of security.


- Features offered
If I’m looking for a primary Anti-Virus system, it definitely has to have real-time resident protection, which also includes E-mail scanning, web-content scanning and scanning for download protocols at minimum…

And if there’s going to be real-time resident protection, a file Exclude feature is absolute must. And this is something where probably all popular AV systems fail at, these FREE AVs leaves this vital feature out, and in doing so leaving out very beneficial feature, an solution to conflicts, an extensive PC/Internet performance decrease depending on software users runs.

I personally feel so strong about this lack of ability in FREE AVs (like AVG Free), I’d not use or recommend a FREE AV (UNLESS) they were planning to use it merely for the On-Demand Scan capabilities.


- Technical Support availability
I think any FREE AV (like AVG Free) that doesn’t offer technical support is not worth recommending and using the product. But ‘Product Popularity’ may swing a person’s decision here..

 

I would choose AntiVir for a free av, because it provides free support over at castlecops, has the best detection rate over the 3 free avs, has the standard features(paid has adware/spyware detection), and it is a popular av to use.

Regards,

Brandon

 

Avast free features mail scanning, web scanning as well as real time scan, P2P module and IM module, also a sort of IPS in form of network protection, all this for free, can't be beat. There are others who offer these features but you have to pay for them. Support for free and paid avast is available at forum.avast.com

 

I agree with Arup. While I do not use it myself, Avast is the best "free" av software that I have used. I always recommend it to folks who are looking for a freebie as well.

 

Sorry Brandon O, I’m with Arup on this one, I just begin using Avast! Free already I’m luving It.. As Arup mentioned, it does cover many aspects, and regarding Adware/Spyware detections, I’m more then happy to have just my AS Real-Time Resident Protection handling these.

What I see for features and how it handling on my system, I simply don’t see other free AVs I’ve tested comparing to these aspects.

I hadn’t used AntiVir personally, I did gather bit information about it just doesn’t interest me, doesn’t catch my eye like Avast! Free does.

 

Anti Vir free is good, but it offers nothing as compared to free Avast, no mail scanning or for that any other module, by the way, Anti Vir Pro only offers mail scanning, nothing else. The other problem is the huge updates of Anti Vir from their slow servers, a pain if you are on dial up. The only advantage of Anti Vir is its extremely low resource consumption, however in these days of 1GB memory, Avast is a small price to pay considering the protection offered.

 

AntiVir Premium offers adware/spyware detection also.

Yeah avast does offer lots of different modules which AntiVir doesnt and its also free. I just dont like the icon and the interface avast has.

Regards,

Brandon

 

Hi Brandon O

You don’t have an option to change Icons used? You don’t like anything that is offered for skins which are offered by default Install or any skins available at the site?

The Avast! Interface, you mean the On-Demand Scanning interface?

 

avast! Home is the winner for me

 

The answer of "What's the best free AV?" is http://img431.imageshack.us/img431/815/antivir8uz.jpg

 

No secret that I have been all over the place trying to find the best "free" virus protection program. I have once again settled for AVG. This is my take on some of them. The technical stuff, I leave to the experts to explain, and I am not an expert.

(A) AntiVir/Classic. The server(S) used to maintain this one are flatly abysmal. The updates are quiet often large. The company behind this product apparently does not support it either.

(B) AVAST. Bloated as far as I was concerned. System ran like driving ones automobile with the hand break on. Boot up was significantly slower than with any of the other "free" ones that I had installed. Using the on-line scan requires a fair amount of computer knowledge, that I am not sure all posses.

(C) AVG. Easy to use and maintain. Limited in the ability to chose ones own options. Don't know about the detection thing, I think that depends upon whom one listens to. My son-in-law has this one installed on the machine my grandkids use, and has had no problems, and this has been on that machine since the days of version 6.0. Two teenage boys use this machine by the way, that should be a fair test for any virus protection program don't you think?

(D) BitDefender. I could never get this one down loaded and installed, so do not have an opinion of it other than that.

Thanks
Wildman

 

I still don't get it how can you say that avast! is bloated
Bloated means you get antivirus including firewall,popup blocker,privacy control,dog walker and babysitter all in one.
People really have to clear up what "bloated" means...

You can't say a product with more settings and tweaks is bloated just because well it has more settings to adjust. Thats not bloat,thats configuration level...