Which antivirus are you using ? also which free ones are good ?

Hellrider

Hellrider

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Well, title ^


I've been thinking of changing anti virus since mine (F-Secure) takes lots of resources and has lots of processes.

I want to know which ones do you use and also if there are any good ones that are free.
 
Avast is great. Only downside is that you have to reregister every year, but that's shouldn't be a reason why not to get it.
 
Norton Internet Security 2007. I would avoid any Norton Anti Virus it slows your PC to much, i hate it.
 
Norton is a joke. Use Avast for free. A smart user shouldn't need more then basic protection. For those "oops" moments.
 
Avast is malware IMO. It sucks and costs money.

Norton is horrible and costs money. They would have to pay me to use it

Affgee - or whatever - sucks balls and costs money.

Use AVG Free and live happy. Or get the paid version which is the entire suite. But all you want is antivirus

-AVG "we think everyone should have strong anti-virus protection"

I've been using it for over a year and never had any problems. It catches shit immediately.


just do search in google.

AVG free anti

if that don't work, try

grisoft avg free anti virus
 
avg 8.0 isn't free though - at least I don't think so.

7.5 is the last free one. they update the definitions all the time, but the GUI is updated in 8.0 - that's all.
 
VirusType2 said:
avg 8.0 isn't free though - at least I don't think so.

7.5 is the last free one. they update the definitions all the time, but the GUI is updated in 8.0 - that's all.
Click to expand...

Well, I downloaded it and am running it....no money out of pocket.
 
AVG is okay if you're limiting yourself to free AV's only. I would not pay for it however, since I found even the paid version to be highly ineffective in the face of a serious infection.

Should you be willing to pay, get Kaspersky or NOD32. I hear BitDefender is also good.

Personally I don't use any AV any more, although I have a few old setup files around for various AV's should one become necessary. More useful than any AV IMO is good browsing practise, good knowledge of what should and shouldn't be running on your comp, copy of hijackthis and maybe ProcessExplorer from sysinternals, and a basic solid firewall (either hardware or software). Armed with all these, most stuff can be identified, disabled and cleaned manually.
 
Bitdefender is the biggest piece of trash ever. That's what was being used when I first started working here, and when I got my 3rd trojan, I decided to just get rid of that and use AVG. In the many years I've used AVG, I've not gotten virus'd unless I did something retarded..."Ohh, an EXE? LET'S RUN IT!"

NP Virus :)
 
Okay so now I hear that BitDefender isn't good. But Kaspersky and NOD32 are definitely good.
 
Sounds risky going without antivirus. that is without a doubt the most important part IMO.

I find tons of trojans. About 20 of them in the past year. (just doing a scan on downloads) I'd rather get rid of them before they even have a chance to do their worst.


it's a pain in the ass, I'll admit, but better safe than sorry. It's especially important to scan any kind of cracked exe or porn. (thats where I found 99%of the trojans - exe's and jpg's)

also, watch out for renamed files

like

README.txt.exe


make sure you go into your windows options and set it to always display filetypes (XP)

otherwise it will just say

README.txt

and the exe part will be hidden
 
Honestly, getting acquainted with your running tasks is the most important bit IMO. That and not running anything risky in the first place, nor using a browser that is susceptible to hijacks.

In the past (when I had AV, but it was ineffective), I've discovered that I was infected just by hearing HD activity when there shouldn't have been any, then checking taskmanager, process explorer or hijackthis (since some programs can hide themselves from the task list in Taskman). Follow it up with a bit of registry wizardry, bit of a purge of any shitware that has made it into Windows/system32 (common target for malicious files) and presto - clean.

Of course at that point you need to run a secondary virus check to make sure, but usually that just accomplishes the donkey work of deleting any inert malicious files that are lying around. Once any malicious progs or dlls are incapacitated, the big important job is done.
 
I've tried trials of Kaspersky and BitDefender recently (just uninstalled BitDefender yesterday and plan on buying NOD32 again since my subscription was up). I didn't have them for a long time so I didn't really get to test out how they handle viruses but they had one too many pop-ups for me (e.g. Allow prompts, yes/no). I'm just too used to NOD32 which I prefer the best. But both Kasp. and BitD. were rated really high in recent years.

BitDefender has a 'gamers mode' which turns off pop-ups but also makes it run in low priority detection mode. But I'd rather have NOD32 which doesn't run in any low priority mode and still has no pop-ups all the time. Unless of course there is actually a virus it detects to quarantine/stop/delete (e.g. in a file you are about to download). Also NOD32 doesn't run heavily on virus definitions like other AVs which have to be updated before you are protected. Hell, even MS used them in past years to scan their software before they released their products.
Marketing blurb but true numbers
 
I don't use any. I run my computer using the least privilege principle which means I run as a limited account user and only log in as an administrator when I need to install something. This makes it virtually impossible for you to get a virus and is way more effective than any anti-virus software ever will be. Vista's UAC is the retarted borther of this principle.
 
No Limit said:
I don't use any. I run my computer using the least privilege principle which means I run as a limited account user and only log in as an administrator when I need to install something. This makes it virtually impossible for you to get a virus and is way more effective than any anti-virus software ever will be. Vista's UAC is the retarted borther of this principle.
Click to expand...
This is actually a very good idea which I always forget to set up/am too lazy to bother with.

Tbh guys if you're going down the free route, don't expect to rely completely on software for virus protection because it just won't be that great. Do stuff like this, or develop good practise in maintaining your comp, like I explained in my earlier post.
Asus said:
I've tried trials of Kaspersky and BitDefender recently (just uninstalled BitDefender yesterday and plan on buying NOD32 again since my subscription was up). I didn't have them for a long time so I didn't really get to test out how they handle viruses but they had one too many pop-ups for me (e.g. Allow prompts, yes/no). I'm just too used to NOD32 which I prefer the best. But both Kasp. and BitD. were rated really high in recent years.
Click to expand...
Yeah, Kaspersky requires a lot of feedback in terms of how you'd like it to deal with stuff. Quite often I like that element of control, eg. after installing a program I like being able to say that it's allowed to create this registry entry but not this other bullshit one. Until you completely set up the framework of rules within which Kasp can operate, though, it can be tiring.

Pitz' story about getting trojans with BitDefender installed make me leery of that program. Sure, it's just anecdotal and I don't know the circumstances, but Kaspersky's hypersensitivity in comparison makes me feel that the same thing would just not be possible with Kaspersky.

I liked that NOD32 seemed to instinctively know what to allow and what not to allow. At the same time, since I never tested it with a virus I was never quite certain if it was just being quietly diligent, or whether it was snoozing on the job. The reviews would suggest the former, but I'm a bit paranoid in that regard.
 
$kelet0r said:
AVG seemed to be really sneaky about the move from 7.5 to 8.0 strongly implying with their adware that you would have to pay to upgrade.
But lo and behold hidden away on the grisoft website was the free version.
Click to expand...

exactly.
 
No Limit said:
I don't use any. I run my computer using the least privilege principle which means I run as a limited account user and only log in as an administrator when I need to install something. This makes it virtually impossible for you to get a virus and is way more effective than any anti-virus software ever will be. Vista's UAC is the retarted borther of this principle.
Click to expand...

Same. While I don't use a limited account I haven't had any Anti-Virus software installed for about 2 years now. I did run a online virus scan out of curiousity. I think it found about 4-5 things but none were really serious. The last time I had a Virus was when I carelessly downloaded and installed something which was meant to be a video codec.
 
No malware, and it costs nothing.
Click to expand...

I tried it for about a week, and Windows will not let me completely remove it even in safe mode. It's been like that for like a half a year. :dozey:

I think I used regedit and stuff like that, but I still stumble across traces sometimes.

it's just no good. AVG is twice as fast, and detects better (could be false positive, but I'm not taking any chances)
 
I could write a program to just search all files on your PC and bring up a message that says "file is a virus. delete?" and try to pass it off as an Antivirus. False positives should mean it doesn't detect better...
 
I'm using Kaspersky Antivirus. It has keeping my PC safe since ahhhmmm... last year i think. Or maybe you can use Avira.
 
Norton 360, I also use Spybot for detection as well...


(runs before imminent flaming)
 
Asus said:
I could write a program to just search all files on your PC and bring up a message that says "file is a virus. delete?" and try to pass it off as an Antivirus. False positives should mean it doesn't detect better...
Click to expand...

when I'm downloading some porn, and it says, "threat detected. trojan jpeg exploit" and gives a name of the virus type, and the image name, I'm willing to take the word from a company like AVG that has millions of installed users. It's not like I'll miss 1 picture.

Let me re-iterate; I'd rather it was (perhaps) too sensitive (AVG) than (perhaps) not detect anything at all (Avast!). I'm not saying that it was a false positive, I'm saying AVG detected stuff that Avast didn't. I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt, since it found trojans in exes that Avast didn't as well. Avast! is malicious and worthless IMO.

Especially since I've never had any type of malicious (including viruses, malware, addware, etc.) problems since installing AVG about a year ago.


Nod may be the best out there, and have the least false positives, but it's not free. i don't have any problems with AVG, so why would I want to pay for a service that does basically the same thing.
 
Thanks for the comments everyone.

I'm also wondering about firewall softwares (what do you use) \ antiviruses with firewalls .
 
I'm using Comodo Firewall Pro - the free version. It was the 2nd best rated this year

there was just an update a few minutes ago and they claimed to have fixed/improved over a dozen things. I'll stick with it and see if it's improved.

It's kind of annoying sometimes because I have it in advanced mode, so I can have more options of how to handle things. (I like to block certain programs from accessing the internet) Hopefully the fixes make it a better experience.


I'm thinking of trying OnlineArmor - the number 1 rated ATM. (also have a free version)
 
I think i'am also getting AVG as it seems that Norton only tells you have a virus once it's on your pc and after you do a scan. I don't think it scans files that are downloaded which is very poor.
 
I was using NOD32 a while back, and it was an excellent AV, but my subscription ran out and I couldn't be arsed with renewing it. I've recently been running without an AV and have had no problems (Using a Netgear DG834 router with loverly firewall and good browsing habits), but this thread has made me download AVG. However, it's ccurently been stupidly annoying to get; download.com's servers on the blink giving me a false file THREE times in a row, and the actual AVG servers only giving me 35kb/s on an 8mb/s connection makes me think it'd be easier just to leave it be.

If you want quality of service, buy an AV.
 
Nod 32 is the best anti virus I have ever used.
AVG sucks imo, it detects fine enough but never seems to be able to delete it and it takes up more memory then nod. I prefer nod 2.7 to nod 3.x, because of it's lower ram usage, just looking at the interface of nod 3.x makes me squeel
 
Never had any problems deleting stuff with AVG.

Just click - 'send to vault' if 'heal' is not an option.. it's good to leave them there for a while, but when you want to delete them just click 'wipe files'


I think AVG is only about 35 MB download with all of the definitions. Shouldn't take very long with broadband. 15 minutes?
 
Laivasse said:
Personally I don't use any AV any more.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I use this brilliant piece of software called "CommonSense". I've been using it, combined with something else called "Scheduled Backups, just in case" for the last couple years, and I haven't gotten infected with any malware, and there are no pesky background processes running that interfere with my applications and waste CPU cycles. Plus, I never have to worry about updating it!
 
I've had AVG for...god...how many years now? Either way, Since I've had it, I've not seen one single virus/trojan on my PC. Now that the new AVG comes bundled with a Spyware Scan....eliminates the need for running Spybot, since AVG does just as good.
 
I use AVG free for antivirus and my routers firewall for my firewall.
 
There's still a human behind the PC so mistakes can happen. And if you ever enter credit info over the web then you better have an AV. If not then backups work fine in case your OS install goes to crap.
 
I use AVG, Ad-Aware and A-Squared (all the free editions). Scan with all three once a week, and have all their unnecessary services turned off. I had a trojan once, but it was taken care of immediately and it didn't cause any problems at all.
 
Ive used avast! for 3 years now, and I never had a problem with it. It uninstalls completely and easily. I dont know what your issue is Virus. Maybe its your name.
 
DreamThrall said:
Yeah, I use this brilliant piece of software called "CommonSense". I've been using it, combined with something else called "Scheduled Backups, just in case" for the last couple years, and I haven't gotten infected with any malware, and there are no pesky background processes running that interfere with my applications and waste CPU cycles. Plus, I never have to worry about updating it!
Click to expand...
^This.



Except for me though, the free anti-malware programs are only there in case I make a mistake somewhere. (Plus, my computer illiterate mother uses my PC too. That's a given though. She IS my mum after all)

As I said in another thread, browsing the internet is like driving a car, as you can crash into a tree if your not careful, and there's probably a malware signature out there with that name somewhere on the webz too. I treat AV programs like auto-body shops that restore your stupid accidents if one is ever made. I don't need my AV program holding my hand at every single turn thank you.


That said, the triumvirate of AVG, ad-aware, and a-squared (all free editions) works great for me, is almost completely non-resource intensive, and can be easily killed under the services control panel just before I game. I scan and update once a week before playing any games to be sure. Can't have any shit-ware bogging down performance.

You only need the suite packages and scheduler if your super-careless though and don't even bother to remember to update every now and then, along with clicking on every damn link on the internet(s). Which is the majority of computer users. That's why the security suite packages sell so well. :p I don't bother with them though because I have some sense and would rather update manually, as such packages hog performance something fierce.

Oh, Norton and Mc-asse sucks balls royally.

EDIT> LOL @ BGthorn for taking Mr. Koroush Ghazi's of Tweakguides advice. Coincidence, no?
He's a great man and the one that recommended a-squared to me. :D
I had the other two AV programs already before ever reading the tweaking companion however.
 
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