Free Anti-Virus & Firewall Programs

Stephen P

My Norton subscription has just expired & I can't afford to renew just yet, is there any free anti-virus & firewall program that I could install for the moment?

garthv

For anti-virus id suggest AVG and for firewall id go for Kerio

is_that_so

stephen p wrote:

My Norton subscription has just expired & I can't afford to renew just yet, is there any free anti-virus & firewall program that I could install for the moment?

In advance of getting a free AV, download the 30 day trial versions of Kaspersky. Very good AV. Make sure you uninstall Norton first!!

http://www.kaspersky.co.uk/trials

angelofdeath

avg free and zonealarm free

i use them both and highly recommend them

Stephen P

Thanks lads for the replies!
Appreciate it!

garthv

angelofdeath wrote:

avg free and zonealarm free

i use them both and highly recommend them

I would stay away from Zone Alarm if i was you. The program is great until i got a major bug with it. It started blocking random ports on me (Bit Torrent , http and ftp to name a few) and then i couldnt uninstall the program. Ended up having to re-install Windows, loadsa fun

Mixie

GaRtH_V wrote:

I would stay away from Zone Alarm if i was you. The program is great until i got a major bug with it. It started blocking random ports on me (Bit Torrent , http and ftp to name a few) and then i couldnt uninstall the program. Ended up having to re-install Windows, loadsa fun

I had a smiliar problem too - I could uninstall ZoneAlarm but once I had successfully removed it I would lose all network connectivity and would have to reinstall Zone Alarm or Windows :mad:

Stephen P

GaRtH_V wrote:

I would stay away from Zone Alarm if i was you. The program is great until i got a major bug with it. It started blocking random ports on me (Bit Torrent , http and ftp to name a few) and then i couldnt uninstall the program. Ended up having to re-install Windows, loadsa fun

Thanks for the tip there, I was trying to install Zone Alarm last night but I wouldn't install for me for some reason
But I'm glad now. I've activated the Windows Firewall, that'll have to do till I can get a few bob together to get Norton again. Its stupid the way you have to subscribe every year with Norton. Does McAfee work the same way?

angelofdeath

oh, well i've never had a problem with it, but i'll keep an eye on it, thanks for the heads up

Board@Work

I tried NOD32 on free 30 day trial and loved it..

Also outpost pro on free 30 day..

both then not too expensive around €40 i think.

free for thirty days and what i like is that they don't slow down your system like Norton that I had before.

Fidelis

What Garth V said, combine AVG with Kerio and you can't go wrong.

Dun

Ditto the AVG / Kerio route; can't go wrong.

Scruff

Is the windows firewall and good or is it just a case of some protection in better than none?

Fidelis

Scruff wrote:

Is the windows firewall and good or is it just a case of some protection in better than none?

The XP firewall will do the job just fine. It's really just a matter of personal preference. I found the Kerio firewall to be highly configurable and user friendly. It's FREE too! Kerio is also officially linked to AVG Free anti-virus, which makes for a very good freeware security bundle.

Stay away from ZoneAlarm though. As people have already said; it's impossible to remove it entirely once it's installed.

Dempsey

AVG & Kerio can be bought together as a package nowadays, I use their free software and it doesnt give me any problems and does exactly what it says on the tin.

Capt'n Midnight

Scruff wrote:

Is the windows firewall and good or is it just a case of some protection in better than none?

The latter. It doesn't stop outbound connections, so if you are already zombied then you'll have no indication when a trojan or what ever dials home

gaizka71

Antivirus free for personal use, great software, I have used it for the past two years....

wanwarlock

definitely avast. my bitdefender pro(really good av tho! i've tried norton av - quite a system hogger)) expired, same situation as you, went googling to find a free av, really for me it came to avg or avast, after reading reviews on download.com + other sites, i chose avast. really good proggie, found some trojans that bitdefender + NAV didn't detect.

byte

Can the Windows Firewall be disabled? I might try installing Kerio if it's as good as people say it is!

Also, though not requested, you can't go without Spyware detection. I actually think MS's Antispyware beta program isn't too bad.

Capt'n Midnight

byte wrote:

I actually think MS's Antispyware beta program isn't too bad.

We'll should know a bit more by August 1st - that's when the current version expires.

aidan_walsh

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

We'll should know a bit more by August 1st - that's when the current version expires.

You haven't had the update pushed out to you yet then? The new expiry date is December.

Spunog UIE

byte wrote:

Can the Windows Firewall be disabled? I might try installing Kerio if it's as good as people say it is!

Also, though not requested, you can't go without Spyware detection. I actually think MS's Antispyware beta program isn't too bad.

yup, you can disable it through the security center thingy in the control panel, when you have a firewall even if its not windows it will probally show up here as being on. When you first get kerio, it gives you a trial of web filter for ads among other things, this caused me problems before with some sites, can't remember what the problem was exactly but it drove me nuts. If you get this problem you can just check the webpage source and it'll say kerio took out whatever bit. If this happens its easy to turn this option of filtering off. Thats the only down side to it tho for me. All the important parts are not trials tho and will never expire

There's a program launcher too in the program that controls what programs can launch others etc, I love this but it may not be everyones cup of tea especially with installers etc (having to permit programs to launch others, they can be set to be remembered etc some people hate it) but it's pretty cool once you have it set up. It also warns you when program executables have been changed.

The trusted & internet zones, incoming and outgoing, are great too. Worth a try at the very least. Changed from Zone Alarm to this and haven't looked back, using it ages now.

Using AVG antivirus mostly. They've improved the ease of which to get it to scan incoming and outgoing messages pretty simple. In a recent update it changed something and finding it hard to get flashget to scan downloads, either way the real time scanner should pick up things but I like having it done the second its downloaded rather than when I try to use/open it.

kinkstr

Board@Work wrote:

I tried NOD32 on free 30 day trial and loved it...

I used NOD for a few month and it seemed to be doing the job, then my computer went a little crazy, uninstalled nod and installed avg, it picked up 3 or 4 viruses on its firsr scan, ill be sticking with avg.