Best Free Antivirus

[lukelc1]

Recommend any I haven't listed in comments.

 

[Ubrales]

Kaspersky Internet Security is excellent!

 

[exit2600x]

By aviria, did you mean Avira?

 

[almartin]

I agree with sophi. I use AVG pro and it is great.

 

[hell_storm2004]

Avira gets my vote. Its detection rate is known to be as good as any paid anti-virus!

 

[johnmathew395]

AVAST & AVIRA are better programs than AVG

http://download.cnet.com/Avast-Free-Anti…

http://download.cnet.com/Avira-AntiVir-P…

I would also download MALWAREBYTES ( its free) to help supplement whatever AV program you use )

http://download.cnet.com/Malwarebytes-An…

Remember ONLY have 1 Antivirus program on your PC

 

[Ricochet_16]

I like both Avira and Microsoft Security Essentials, which I configured to use at the same time on my Win 7 computer without any conflicts. In order to use MSE with it, you have to use a clean install of MSE first, after disabling Windows Defender, with all traces of other previously installed AVs removed, then install Avira. MSE is not compatible with Avast, though. Avast will disable MSE, as will several other AVs.

Ricochet_16

 

[cats_Paw]

Microsoft essentials should not be there at all as they are compatible with another antivirus aplication.
Avira for me, reason is simple, i used others before (avast, AVG), and they simply never found anything 😀. But avira seems to trap some stuff on its toes so im guessing it might be slightly better ;D.

 

[Hawkeye22]

I vote for avast version 5 or higher. We've just had one of our computers at work running MSE get infected. It never tossed a warning. I know not all A/V programs catch everything, but this is the 3rd time MSE has let us down.

 

[trolling troll]

I second cat's_paw. You can have it with any other lol ? I go with malwarebytes and msse 😀. They always find the trojans.....so many trojans....damn you game modder's !

 

[Ubrales]

I second cat's_paw. You can have it with any other lol ? I go with malwarebytes and msse 😀. They always find the trojans.....so many trojans....damn you game modder's !

Good point! I just bought Malwarebytes and installed it yesterday! Read a lot of excellent reviews about it.

 

[trolling troll]

The time to worry is when your hard drive or bsod message wont let you go into safe mode...then it's a fml day . Lol idk if there's anything you can do about that, replace the hard drive i guess

 

[Ubrales]

The time to worry is when your hard drive or bsod message wont let you go into safe mode...then it's a fml day . Lol idk if there's anything you can do about that, replace the hard drive i guess

Can't that be virus cleaned by connecting it as an external drive to another computer?

 

[trolling troll]

Well, i guess you could, but when you turn your comp on and immediatly you get a bsod, I dont know if you can. But hey, if you can thats something I didnt do and bought a 700 $ pc for

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

Problem with connecting the drive to another machine is that many times, during the scans you will blow away system files, so you put the drive in the other machine, and it may work, but half the OS may be gone too.

If you've never heard of this, try it, use it. You will love it!

http://www.ubcd4win.com/

It's the Utlimate Boot CD for Windows. You need a Windows XP or Server 2003 disc(I think that Server 03 works) to build it. Once you build it, you can have it make an ISO you can burn on cd, then when you find a computer you can't boot, many times you can boot a copy of Windows XP from the disc you build. I use it for data recovery if a pc won't boot, hook my external to it, boot up, beautiful.

I find it useful if I'm removing viruses and a hosts file is messed up and hidden to where I can't work on it in the regular OS, boot to that CD, which usually lets me see it, take ownership of that file and delete, and I can then replace it with a clean hosts file.

Also, there is a program on that disc called Darik's Boot and Nuke. If you've got a drive you want to erase or rescue from viruses, that app is supposed to do a Department of Defense grade data wipe on the drive.

It's a beautiful tool. I've used it when machines would not boot due to malware, go in and run a disk check on the drive, get the machine booting back to safe mode, and then remove things. You can do stuff like that, people think you are a magician with pc's, lol.


Btw, Avast gets my vote also. Used to use AVG, decent software, but another friend of mine who's also a tech recommended Avast. I tried it, not going back to AVG. Avast, even in the free version, has too many features. Of course real time scan, web shield, etc. One of my favorite things with Avast is their boot time scan. You can basically have the scan intercept the pc before it can boot and delete things that may have stayed hidden from other apps. So far I've not seen another Antivirus able to do that.