And the best free antivirus is...

[Scorpion]

Hi Digitans ,
There are many free things on the internet and would like to know the best free antivirus program. U can buy NAV but what's the fun ? Freeware is what I look for.
AVG is good but it's resident shield is ineffective. The other antivirus programs I used either ask me to pay for updates or give updates only once in ages !
Any experience with free Antivirus programs?

[funkymonkey]

Well about 3 months ago i personally tried 4-5 different antivirus on different machines of our college. And fromt hat experience Antivir is the best option and not AVG.
Antivir has very small footprint. Just 4.2 MB download size, so great for dialup users. It dosent hog system memory like norton on AVG does. Its reviews suggest it has better detection rate than AVG and on par with NAV, in fact there no virus that NAV can find and deal with and Antivir cant.
auto updates are easy, you can also download update manually.
And yesh update files are also small unlike NAV which makes you download huge files.

Just give it a try, you wont be disappointed
Get it here
http://www.free-av.com/

[swatkat]

Grisoft's NEW AVG 7 FREE Edition based on AVG 7 PRO rules.

[Saharika]

know what the best option is
one to rely on only one software and install few of them
by the way i think free is fre e
it is better to invest some thing now then u invest later after u lose ur data to cure virus
well avg i have many times seen it only inform ur computer has been infected
so best way pay some thing and buy a nice av from ur local store'
i think most of paid one are nice i say most not all
i dont mean fre ones are bad but
go back to thoery no thing in the world come to u free
so thanks
saha

[lamrinnirmal]

go
http://housecall.antivirus.com
the best online antivirus scan i ve seen. although i have norton i go to their site and run their scan every week. it takes time to download their engine but thats a price you pay ! no free lunches out here!

[xenkatesh]

AVG my choice!!!

[naveenchandran]

AVG has a good detection rate

[aadipa]

AVG and Antivir both are good

[drgrudge]

kaspersky rulezzz

[SmoothCriminal]

AVG dude.s.. this thread shd've have a since there are very few free AVs..

[iinfi]

well mates
many might have different opinions ..... but i would go with Avast !! its the best free antivirus ...
regards
arvind

[adithyagenius]

I've used AVG for a long time. It detects many trojans but failed to detect blaster in my CD even after 3 months since blaster's removal tool was made. I update my antivirus every 3 days. I couldn't update my windows coz I had fresh installed version and th CD contained the updates. The funny thing is I downloaded Blaster as an critical update from MS site.

Let me put up my review
AVG:
pros:
1) Basic inteface. No stress on cpu and mem. I played Serious Sam and Quake 3 without knowing that AVg was doing a scheduled scan.
2)Easy to configure and install.
3) Updates released every 2 days.
4) Has heuristics
5) It has 2 separate programs and a process which takes negligible mem and cpu. Even when 2 programs (control centre and AVG for Win) are not loaded it can warn about viral activity and tell u to launch antivirus progam due to the process.
cons:
1) doesn't have database of virii. It can say which class of virii it is but not its exact name
2) It can detect virii but not remove them. It can remove small trojans but nothing more. How can it give info how to remove blaster when it can't name it?
3) there are 2 separate programs. Control centre does the detection of viral activity. When it finds a virus it tells u to launch the main program and scan. So u have to scan the whole hard disk. If it caught why not remove it immediately?
4)no tech support entertained.

[sidewinder]

I am using avg free for over two years now.My comp vever got infected with a virus.....I also have nav which i dont run continiously...just for a weekly manual scan...My choice AVG.A ntivir is good but gives too much false warning.Their heuristic scan is too much sensitive yaaar !!!!!!!!

[Prashray]

AVG is good.

[atool]

AVG rules !!! in free catag its best

[silverTwins]

been using avg but am not at all satisfied with the performance and am very very pleased with the performance of

surprise surprise

its zonealarm security suites antivirus.

altho i downloaded it and am running it without payiong abuck to thge zone guys i will say its good and as far as the resident detection is concerned i have seen antivir screw the a**es of quite alot of viruses

but antivir is not gud in treating the infections
here comes into play zone's antivirfus
it has got quite a gud tretament paln and itr has almost treated every virus threat i threw on it.

people i downloaded Norton System Works and with it i got a keygen also
the keygens ok but as they say nothin comes free so it was a trojan and the first antivirus to detect it was antivir with zone being the second and AVG sittin mum.

people i dont have the free version of AVG i have and use the professional version and seriously i think it suxxxxxxx

zones security suite has everything that u need starting from the firewall, antivirus, privacy manager and loads other stuff buddies.
my vote goes to Antivir for best detection and resident shield in the free category and zone in terms of curing infections.

[silverTwins]

so guys as far as antivirus is u need too try out newer ones and as already said there is nothin like a free lunch so start diggin ur pockets for money and buy the best or use my rules and download warez

[funkymonkey]

well no.
I will rather format my PC than useing Norton. I hate norton, it consumes too much system resources, delayed restart is pain in a$$.
I wont use warez of Norton bcoz its best. For 99% of our needs there is good enough freeware out there.
Every single software on my pc is either legit or freeware. Warez come with their own problems. I can understand people using pirated OS and office ( office has very good alternative in the form of openoffice and 602prp PCSUIT ) but there are sooo many alternatives to everything else including Norton. I dont like AVG but i would rather use AVG if given choice between AVG and Norton, both consume system resources but AVG consume less resources.

Antivirus is 1 thing but you know 80% of the virus can be avoided just by enabling the firewall in windows xp or free firewalls like zonealarm. for rest 20% AVG, Antivir are good enough.

[perk_bud]

I think avast is also not a bad option either!!

[adithyagenius]

@silvertwins

About zone av. r u able to play games without perfomance penalties with zone running in the background?

[sujithtom]

AVG is my hero

[swatkat]

Try BitDefender v8 Pro Plus,It has got AntiVirus,AntiSpam,Firewall and a very good Real Time Scanner.Try it out.
http://www.bitdefender.com/bd/site/products.php?p_id=25

[ujjwal]

I havent had any problem with AVG so far ... recently upgraded to AVG 7.0 Free

[iinfi]

well hi everybody
i think Avast from Alwil is the best bet ...
its fast improving its freeware version
regards
arvind.

[Onkar Joshi]

Try the "Eicar AV Test" to test how effective your Resident Shield is. A test virus,which does nothing,is present in a file to be downloaded. A standard test recognized by all AV products. Use this to test if your Resident Protection is effective.

Download links are present on this page -> http://www.eicar.org/anti_virus_test_file.htm

Please post your results over here too alongwith the product you are using.

I was using AVG 6.0 Free Edition

.com file - detected by Resident Shield
.txt, .zip files - detected when a manual scan was initiated

[Eager_Beever]

In my opinion, not a single Anti virus can guarantee against all viruses even if updated regularly. You have to use more than one for a complete safeguard. I used to use AVG, but now am using Kaspersky (not FREE), and Panda.

[lavanjoy]

My vote goes to AVG

[Nikita7JS]

AVG is ruling................
Not others............................................ .........
But I've installed McAfee Internet Security which I got for free.

[curvenger]

If u you wanna be free from Viruses use Linux, the best option !

[iinfi]

Originally Posted by swatkat

Try BitDefender v8 Pro Plus,It has got AntiVirus,AntiSpam,Firewall and a very good Real Time Scanner.Try it out.
http://www.bitdefender.com/bd/site/products.php?p_id=25

is this a freeware??