Free Anti Virus Software request

martyeds

My wife purchased a new laptop last year. It came with 1 year free Norton antivirus which expired a few weeks ago. Can anyone recommend something free of charge which will do the same job. Laptop is mainly used to surfing the net, sending and receiving emails and watching the odd television online.
Thanks

chin_grin

Microsoft Security Essentials.

frozenfrozen

Another vouch for ms security essentials

paulusdu

i use AVG free edition on all my systems and also on my wife's. I've never had a problem with it.

youllneverknow

avira best software out there Ms security essentials is aloud of bull

Riesen_Meal

Microsoft Security Essentials, the best free one in my opinion, Avg is a bit of an OS hog these days.... (in my humble opinion)

Kiith

I've used AVG free for years. Does the job nicely, though some of the 'upgrade' popups can be annoying. I've not really looked into if it's any good though, just has served me well enough.

MillieJ

I use Avira at home. It's pretty lightweight and does a very good job @ detecting threats.

I also remember giving UnThreat a try. It's not one of the big names, but it gets really positive reviews wherever I checked.

Snowbat

I wonder if the folks recommending Microsoft Security Essentials are aware of how bad it is these days? It failed to detect 7% of the malware samples in this AV-Comparatives test - the worst of 20 products tested.

yoyo

I replyed here as to why I still reccomend MSE over Avira, AVG etc. I have not had any issues with MSE but had plenty with Avira, each to their own, but Avira has a high amount of false positives which is not good either. I've had to fix machines which got corrupted in the past as Avira/Mc Affee/AVG deleted or broke critical system files, so having a high detection rate as well as a high false positive rate in my opinion isn't much use, I'd also think MSE should score higher than the av test, as I know from expierience some listed there do not work as well as MSE, where symantec/norton out of interest?

Nick

Snowbat

The report says it is limitied to 20 products and that vendors agreed to the tests. I'd guess either Symantec didn't want to be tested or AV-Comparatives already had 20 products selected to test (strongly suspect the former).

False positives are certainly a nuisance, though I haven't seen more than 3 on AVG and 1 on AVIRA to date, and I'd prefer that to the risk of missing nearly 1 in 10 malware.

frozenfrozen

Currently using avg and it is annoying. Constantly telling me that chrome is using X amount of ram, the UI is sluggish, it will often refuse to remove a threat found, and also often remove something which is not a threat, and I haven't told it to remove anything.

I've heard nothing but good things about ms e, and from using it previously, it just worked away quietly in the background and did what it was meant to do.

I will only get a virus from downloading *something*. Some cripted and fudded file binded to music or video. Chances are, the person who made that virus are looking for hosts, paypal/cc/ steam info. That's their target. Avg spend all their time protecting against files which are attached to emails to try get fools to click. msE may be susceptible to those attacks, but I am not. Since lots of people use avg and other popular avs, the majority of viruses will be protected against those big names from being detected. regardless of what av you use, when a virus is in it's early days, it won't get detected. It all depends on how quick the company behind the av update and protect against that new virus.


I'm reading over this and I've said this so terribly. It makes sense in my head, I promise.

chin_grin

frozenfrozen wrote: »

I'm reading over this and I've said this so terribly. It makes sense in my head, I promise.

I think I know what you're getting at, the best anti-virus is common sense...(and mse! :pac:).

Overheal

Snowbat wrote: »

The report says it is limitied to 20 products and that vendors agreed to the tests. I'd guess either Symantec didn't want to be tested or AV-Comparatives already had 20 products selected to test (strongly suspect the former).

False positives are certainly a nuisance, though I haven't seen more than 3 on AVG and 1 on AVIRA to date, and I'd prefer that to the risk of missing nearly 1 in 10 malware.

when you go to the actual reports even they products they choose regularly decline to be tested in some areas of the testing process for one reason or another.

frozenfrozen

Just built my new pc, installed mse and I already had a virus from transferring files from my old pc protected by avg. had this literally about an hour and I have a virus

yoyo

frozenfrozen wrote: »

Just built my new pc, installed mse and I already had a virus from transferring files from my old pc protected by avg. had this literally about an hour and I have a virus

This can happen, what you need to remember is though that anytime you copy a file it is checked by the anti virus resident shield. Unless you run monthly/weekly full virus scans viruses can be lying in a file on a hard disk, which the av software has no reason to check, its only when its being moved, that it gets checked and is flagged

Nick

ressem

Based on computers that I've seen, MSE seems to be ineffective at picking up the malware that exploits Java Vulnerabilities on websites. The cheap file scanning only version of ESET isn't good either.

So keep your java vm bang up to date.

petercena

Agreed, Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is the best antivirus i have ever used, Avast, Kaspersky, Norton all are not more than waste of money but MSE actually works. I have personally experienced that since i am using this antivirus my PC is not facing any problem regarding virus. According to me MSE is the best antivirus.

Overheal

Unfortunately peter a lot of it is a matter of personal perception: you might think something is the best thing since fort knox but you may not even be aware of the possible threats that are slipping past it.

yoyo wrote: »

This can happen, what you need to remember is though that anytime you copy a file it is checked by the anti virus resident shield. Unless you run monthly/weekly full virus scans viruses can be lying in a file on a hard disk, which the av software has no reason to check, its only when its being moved, that it gets checked and is flagged

Nick

And thats my big problem with free (and paid) "just AV" programs. They only really detect most problems whenever they do a system scan, which could be intervals of hours, days, or weeks before a problem is detected.

At least with a paid internet security suite you have a lot more going on in the way of live protection through the firewall and browser integration. And no I don't mean that ****ty awl AVG Linkscanner that bogs down your connection.