Best free antivirus for Windows 8.1?

Status
Not open for further replies.

TheArtOfWar

Honorable
Nov 20, 2013
62
0
10,630
Good morning,
Just yesterday I had to format my desktop and lost all my files to what probably seemed like a malware. I was running microsoft security essentials and malware anti-bytes but it still managed to get through.
Alas, I couldn't do much last time but now I want to be better prepared for the future.

TL;DR What is the best free antivirus out there for win 8.1? I am looking for a good balance between defensive capabilities and minimal performance hit on my resources. What do you recommend?
 
Solution
There's a website called av-comparatives.org does monthly reports on effectiveness of AV suites. So far it looks like Avira is kicking everyone's ass except Kapersky (by .2% but beat it for false positives) and Trend Micro. But Trend Micro and Kapersky only offer paid subscriptions. Avira has a paid version as well but the AV engine it uses is the same as in the free version. Avast and AVG tend to battle it out for 2nd place. Avast has a lower score on prevention when compared to AVG, but AVG only does better because of user actions so read that as you will.

Reyaz123

Admirable
Avast antivirus, avg antivirus and for malware, malwarebytes.

Any time you've come across a difficult virus or malware that needs removing, boot into windows safe mode with networking and run a full virus scan from there to completely remove that virus.

Hope this helps.
 

TheArtOfWar

Honorable
Nov 20, 2013
62
0
10,630


How does it compare to Bitdefender and AVG? Also should I run malware antibytes alongside it?
 

TheArtOfWar

Honorable
Nov 20, 2013
62
0
10,630


The last virus I caught wouldn't allow me to boot into safe mode :p Maybe I was pressing the wrong button combination.. Just to know, what are the buttons to press? :D
 

TheArtOfWar

Honorable
Nov 20, 2013
62
0
10,630


Thanks for the info, seems like I was doing it right but it didn't work..
 
There's a website called av-comparatives.org does monthly reports on effectiveness of AV suites. So far it looks like Avira is kicking everyone's ass except Kapersky (by .2% but beat it for false positives) and Trend Micro. But Trend Micro and Kapersky only offer paid subscriptions. Avira has a paid version as well but the AV engine it uses is the same as in the free version. Avast and AVG tend to battle it out for 2nd place. Avast has a lower score on prevention when compared to AVG, but AVG only does better because of user actions so read that as you will.
 
Solution
Status
Not open for further replies.