Free Anti-Virus

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Fuma

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Is there any GOOD (but free) anti-virus software out there?
 
SharkBait said:
Bitdefender FTL. I like AVG. Avast has that annoying voice when a thread has been found... :D
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There was a discussion here recently about the pros and cons....

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=145162

Several users have reported AVG, Avast and Avira have an anooying habit of deleting files in the background without user input and with no option to quarantine or rename. BitDefender does not appear to have that problem.

BitDefender does however have a problem on startup that sometimes it does not properly load the Active Guard.

There is no perfect Free Anti-virus, in fact there is no perfect anti-virus at all. Most of the users on here seem to favour NOD32 or Kaspersky, but they are not cheap.

The user needs to do his own testing to see what he is happy with. In my experience though users with large archives of files should stay away from AVG, Avast or Avira.
 
Garyvdh said:
There is no perfect Free Anti-virus, in fact there is no perfect anti-virus at all. Most of the users on here seem to favour NOD32 or Kaspersky, but they are not cheap.
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Agreed, the only reason why I am not using NOD32 as well, is the price. Actually I don't use any antivirus as home, I just make sure I stay away from the p0rn sites and any serials sites. :D
 
SharkBait said:
Agreed, the only reason why I am not using NOD32 as well, is the price. Actually I don't use any antivirus as home, I just make sure I stay away from the p0rn sites and any serials sites. :D
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Common sense + best practices > Anti-Virus (in my experience).

I know someone who never installs an anti-virus on his computer except once a year where he does a full system scan just to make sure everything's still OK then uninstalls it :D
 
This just had to come up... :D

From what I've heard, you can get a virus on Linux as well, it just less hear of... Come to think of it, I am beginning to think that it is lunux guys writing the viruses to p!ss off windows users :D
 
SharkBait said:
Bitdefender FTL. I like AVG. Avast has that annoying voice when a thread has been found... :D
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You can disable that voice in the options. ;)

Heita_Hola said:
Is there any GOOD (but free) anti-virus software out there?
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I would go for Avast or Avira Antivir for a free solution. The only thing annoying about Avira is the aggressive advertising it uses. (When you're done with an update, it displays a popup promoting the paid version.)

Avast is probably the best since it offers great real-time protection and an HTTP scanner. Not many free products scan websites as you browse them.
 
Moogar said:
You can disable that voice in the options. ;)



I would go for Avast or Avira Antivir for a free solution. The only thing annoying about Avira is the aggressive advertising it uses. (When you're done with an update, it displays a popup promoting the paid version.)

Avast is probably the best since it offers great real-time protection and an HTTP scanner. Not many free products scan websites as you browse them.
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Just be aware that HTTP scanners and link scanners like AVG chew extra bandwidth. Rather use Firefox and no-script and save on bandwidth.
 
btw, you can add folders to your exception list in AVG, but you have to do it manually... and you cannot specify specific files or filenames.
 
I don't like the new AVG at all. People have been reporting that it completely chows your monthly cap, and it's detection rates aren't half as good as they used to be.
 
Moogar said:
I don't like the new AVG at all. People have been reporting that it completely chows your monthly cap, and it's detection rates aren't half as good as they used to be.
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You can also turn off the link scanner so it does not do that. Rather use McAfee Site Advisor or Firefox with noscript. But ja, AVG dropped the ball with version 8.
 
AVG 8 is ok, but BitDefender is sooo much better. My pc became so unstable, and I also had a codec virus and AVG could do nothing about it.

So I reformated and viola (or however you spell it :P), everything worked. I made sure that I installed my BitDefender before I even thought of reconnecting my old drives (Bought a new hdd as well). Updated etc.

So started copying stuff across and what do you know? Virus after trojan etc. BitDefender got them all, and AVG had said nothing to me, it was up to date, I did do deep scans, everything no results apart from "your system is safe and clean".

So ya BitDefender helped me a lot, and that was BitDefender 2008 not 2009, so I don't know how good the new one is.

And the problems with the live scanning bar, only had it once, just restart orenable it again in settings.
 
Avira

I think Avira's free edition is pretty good
Code: 
http://www.free-av.com/
 
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