{Request} Anti-Virus Software

the_viper2kie

Does anyone know of any bargains in this area. Need to get some antivirus for my girlfiriend and brothers laptops. Preferably free but am willing to pay if people have geniune recommendations!

Thanks

H

m8

The best free Anti Virus software around.

Bridan

Avast Home edition AntiVirus is free and seems to do the trick.
You can get it on www.download.com

bringitdown

Okay for a relatively savvy user, some free AV (AVG, Avast, AntiVir), a copy of MS Anti Spyware or Ad-Aware or both and some form of personal firewall (MS built-in, Zonealarm Free) and a good dose of common sense should be plenty.

Non techies sometimes need a helping hand, a little education perhaps. I went away leaving my house mates at the PC for four weeks, came back and it was riddled with dialers, spyware all sorts of crap!! Despite the fact I have the system fairly well locked down.

For some reason certain people just help but click on thost banners! Its like Dougal in the airplane cockpit.

RicardoSmith

bringitdown wrote:

...I went away leaving my house mates at the PC for four weeks, came back and it was riddled with dialers, spyware all sorts of crap!! Despite the fact I have the system fairly well locked down. ....

Lock down their accounts so they can do nothing. Always works.

iisollie

I like Bitdefender - //www.bitdefender.com/site/Main/view/Download-Free-Products.html
I think its better than AVG
ollie

WILKEL

Using AVG for about a year - no problems whatsoever.
also - just installed the beta version of microsoft antispyware - got great reviews in the pc magasines - it is free at the moment from the microsoft website.

m8

iisollie wrote:

I like Bitdefender - //www.bitdefender.com/site/Main/view/Download-Free-Products.html
I think its better than AVG
ollie

Yeh it looks good but it's a scan on demand only piece of kit so I would still go with AVG

joker77

I was asked to have a look at a PC for a friend that had some viruses on it. Initially AVG was installed, but this was unable to remove 4 of the viruses (the AVG program actually said this).

So I installed AntiVir Professional. This found a further 7, and in total removed all 11.

I'm going with AntiVir, it's free as well!

Voodoo2

I find Norton Antivirus the best of them all, ive tried everyone, i have it on my system, you can get it online direct for €46 euro if you are willing to download it, its the best, once you its kept up to date! Zone alarm Pro is brilliant firewall, it has an anti -adware and spam filter that works, keeps itsself uptodate, and does a scan @ startup it removed on average 2-3 adware everytime i go on the net, from site, and tracking cookies etc, but @ the end of the day, all antivirus is uselless unless you keep the difinitions uptodate!!

jayo2004

You must work for Symantec stay away from norton!!!!!

ianmc38

I use Avast Home Edition, Zone Alarm Firewall, Ad-Aware and Spybot Search and Destroy. More than ample protection against everything unsavoury on the PC, and best of all they're free.

ianmc38

Voodoo2 wrote:

I find Norton Antivirus the best of them all, ive tried everyone, i have it on my system, you can get it online direct for €46 euro if you are willing to download it, its the best, once you its kept up to date! Zone alarm Pro is brilliant firewall, it has an anti -adware and spam filter that works, keeps itsself uptodate, and does a scan @ startup it removed on average 2-3 adware everytime i go on the net, from site, and tracking cookies etc, but @ the end of the day, all antivirus is uselless unless you keep the difinitions uptodate!!

Its the worst piece of AV software out there. Uses loads of resources and cripples PC performance. Avoid.

Tobias Greeshman

I had the Blaster Worm on my PC last year, and Norton AntiVirus definitions fully updated and it never even picked up on it!!! Pure ****! The Free ones mentioned are pretty good, I've used AVG in the past and found it pretty good!!!

SouperComputer

AVG is one of the best, and free too. Perfect for home users.

Norton is the greatest example of overmarketed tripe I have come across. Its slow, astoundingly buggy and bloated as hell. Its heuristics are average to say the least. Probably not a good idea for me to slate it too much however, as I get a lot of work from the mess it makes of peoples machines!

If you are looking to pay for AV, get NO32 from EsET, written in machine code, excellent heuristics, lots of features and extremely low footprint. Hardcore AV.

Latest Nod32 has anti spyware built in too, although I still would not trus just a single vendor for this on their own.

For spyware, use MS's (AKA Giants) antispyware as a resident shield and scan with Hitman Pro.

RicardoSmith

Norton are you crazy? Its tripe.

ghost26ie

ms antispyware ain't worth s**t. spent the last couple of days cleaning machines in work and the only softwares doing their jobs are adaware, spysweeper trial, avg and spybot. ms didn't find anything. its just microsoft tryin to look like they're doin something for security. some of the machines i have cleaned up are riddled with spyware, viruses and such.

rick_fantastic

i use norton system work premier 2005 which pretty much does everything....

Trampas

Nortons is bad. Can cause more of pain than anything else also by blocking stuff it shouldn't be.

I use AVG and Ad aware does the biz for me.

Also people should has 2 sign ons for ever pc (One is admin for install and only should be ever used when installing s/w and the other for doing whatever else you need to do) This should help ease this virus installing shlt on your PC

RicardoSmith

rick_fantastic wrote:

i use norton system work premier 2005 which pretty much does everything....

Well you think it does. My only experience of Norton is from fixing people PC's who have it installed. I usually (for the crack) scan it with some free software and people are usually horrified to see a) what it doesn't find b) how much faster the PC is with it uninstalled. I used to use Norton Speed disk and other tools about 10 years ago on the Mac. I used to think it was cool then. Now I wouldn't use any of their stuff. Oddly it always scores well in magazine and online tests. Which makes me wonder about the impartiality of magazine and website reviews.

greglo23

nortons is absolute crap. avg + spybot s&d + Spywareblaster + Spywareguard does the trick. http://www.grisoft.com/doc/289/lng/us/tpl/tpl01 for Avg
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/ for Spybot
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html for Spywareblaster & Spywareguard

Voodoo2

ianmc38 wrote:

Its the worst piece of AV software out there. Uses loads of resources and cripples PC performance. Avoid.

Ive 4Gigs of Ram on my PC if you have 512 i agree its a pain on sys resourses, but ive tried them all as i sell and repair PC's but everything ive tried does not do the job, plenty of free ones, but they are not open source, if they were Linux OS i would recommend them right now! but windows based for Value for Money, only €46euro its brilliant piece of mind but everyone to there own!

Webmonkey

Look norton is a pile of sh*t. I've being working years in computer repairs and I have honestly never seen norton do its job. It would always say failure to delete/repair file if it even found the virus. I would always have to remove it manually.
The Free Antivirus's are a lot better IMO.
If you have less than a gig of ram, then really don't consider norton as it brings a computer down to its knees. And 4 gigs is miles above the average PC. Most people have 512/1gig

Voodoo2

Hey Webmonkey,long time no here, u coming to tralee lans? Anyway Norton, Its crap if you dont update it, or if you have less then 1gig of ram, hey horses for courses i like it and ill be upgrading to Norton AV 2006 soon :-)

Webmonkey

hey man. When the next lan, must get around to going to one of them again, college began this year so it was a bit hectic.

RicardoSmith

Voodoo2 wrote:

Ive 4Gigs of Ram on my PC if you have 512 i agree its a pain on sys resourses, but ive tried them all as i sell and repair PC's but everything ive tried does not do the job, plenty of free ones, but they are not open source, if they were Linux OS i would recommend them right now! but windows based for Value for Money, only €46euro its brilliant piece of mind but everyone to there own!

No matter how much of ram it would still take up the same amount of cpu cycles, which slow your machine down. You might not notice it if you have a fast machine and you've always had it installed. But you'll really notice it as soon as you uninstal it. Whats more worrying is on the machines I scanned it hasn't found a lot of viruses and other malware. Usually the people who use it are selling it in one form or another. Usually to add "value" to the hardware they are selling. But it works for you thats fair enough. Any one I know using the free stuff finds it great. Some of them have even bought the pro versions they like it so much.

old boy

panda seems to work for me, no probs i think, lappy works away, im happy

south

www.avast.com