Best Freeware Anti Virus

joseluisxp

joseluisxp

New Member
Reaction score
0
Location
MIAMI
Hey guy i just wanna know your Personals Opinions about the Freeware Anti Virus that are in The market with one do you think its the Best one.
 
Britec09 on Youtube periodically does a lot of real world tests with various A/Vs free and paid, all against heavily infected machines; you should check into that / follow his channel. Things change so quickly it's difficult to keep up. I think perhaps the best thing to do is look at what fares better not right now, but historically.

surprisingly enough I remember seeing recently that at least with Windows 8.x, Defender is actually among the best! Now take that same engine in MSSE on 7 and below, not so much, it's crap actually -- which is funny to me.. I used to prefer it as it wasn't nearly as bloated as anything else out there, but the actual performance of it is so awful.. :\
 
FoolishTech said:
surprisingly enough I remember seeing recently that at least with Windows 8.x, Defender is actually among the best! Now take that same engine in MSSE on 7 and below, not so much, it's crap actually -- which is funny to me.. I used to prefer it as it wasn't nearly as bloated as anything else out there, but the actual performance of it is so awful.. :\
Click to expand...

Wouldn't they use the same definitions? Do you remember where you saw that at? Security Essentials is so bad now that I won't even install it on customer's computers. It is exceptional in the false positives category, probably because it can't find anything in the first place, LOL.
 
Now Avira has got rid of those annoying splash screens pushing the paid version at you it's an attractive option. Seems to do well in tests, pretty quiet and not a resource hog.
 
Avast in my opinion. I'm running Avast and malwarebytes pro on my personal box which seems effective. The other nice thing about avast is that they also have a nice feature where you can create a bootable cd or usb drive. Haven't seen any other av do that.
 
Tekguy said:
Wouldn't they use the same definitions? Do you remember where you saw that at? Security Essentials is so bad now that I won't even install it on customer's computers. It is exceptional in the false positives category, probably because it can't find anything in the first place, LOL.
Click to expand...

I got that out of a conversation with Britec. He did a video though I didn't watch it I just ask for the info directly I rarely watch vids for some reason.

EDIT: while I guess they likely use the same defs, I think all the difference is in the engine and how it interacts with the OS..
 
MobileTechie said:
Now Avira has got rid of those annoying splash screens pushing the paid version at you it's an attractive option. Seems to do well in tests, pretty quiet and not a resource hog.
Click to expand...

Avira has done very well with the last few tests AV-Comparatives did so I installed it on my bench machine recently to try it out. The splash screen is gone, but there are quite a few little pop-ups in the lower right corner that are kind of annoying.
 
Back in the day, you could turn off notifications using one of the methods mentioned here. I don't know if they work with the latest release. As a matter of routine, I always configure Avira to not ask the user what do do upon detection of stuff, to use highest level of heuristics, and to monitor all extended threat categories except unusual runtime compression. Those settings reduce the nuisance factor for my customers, but I suspect they are not the pop-ups of which you speak.

PS - Avira has a long history of excellent detection. It was top-rated for many years, which is why it has been my AV of choice for years.
 
Last edited:
Avast / can do before boot scans, set it to scan inside screen saver, can turn off nag screens, easy to use, not a resource hog, been using it for 3 + years along with malwarebytes. I put it on every pc i touch that runs free AV :D
 
damitman said:
Avast / can do before boot scans, set it to scan inside screen saver, can turn off nag screens, easy to use, not a resource hog, been using it for 3 + years along with malwarebytes. I put it on every pc i touch that runs free AV :D
Click to expand...

The only thing I noticed about Avast that can sometimes cause trouble is that it seems to now want to install .Net Client Profile 4 (or whatever it's called) when you install Avast on XP (it might to it on other O/S but it seems to hurt XP the most). On some XP boxes after that's done all reboots can take several minutes from that point onwards.

Seems most of the time you can clear it up by going into CMD, then to c:windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727 and running "NGEN executequeueditems". It runs for about 10 minutes and when done you reboot and system boot time goes back to normal boot times. This does not happen on all XP boxes but it happens enough and unless you do the above a boot can take 2-3 minutes before you get desktop.
 
I'm an avast fan as well and have not experienced the above but don't work on as much xp as I used to. Avast +mbam pro seems effective.
 
I ran that 360 for a while (made a post about it somewhere here)....as I was curious about it.
Slick interface
No nags
However...what I didn't like, was the drag (slow down) it put on my laptop the during the first login. If I recall, it halted anything you want to do until it ran a quick scan, and it kept my wireless NIC from latching on until it was complete with that scan.

It got to the point where I got tired of waiting 5 minutes to use my laptop each time I crack the lid open (which...is like a dozen times per day) as I travel around.

My laptop wasn't a dog either, the one I had it on was a Thinkpad 420s with an i5.

For someones desktop rig which is on all the time ...may be a good product.

Would also keep an eye out for future browser hooks, that product is somehow tied in with Baidu (spell?)...which I recall reading in a long thread at Wilders was a Chinese internet service (similar to Google)...which had its eyes on being the Google of closed internet China.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Velvis
Opinions on moving QBs to rightworks.com?
Replies
8
Views
489
YeOldeStonecat
YeOldeStonecat
Diggs
Spectrum Security Alert
Replies
10
Views
1K
Diggs
Diggs
thecomputerguy
These chrome notification Virus Alerts are getting out of control!
2
Replies
38
Views
3K
britechguy
britechguy
gexos
Power Panel: My new app to control common computer functions
Replies
11
Views
1K
GTP
GTP
callthatgirl
Forms missing in New Outlook
2
Replies
21
Views
2K
Sky-Knight
Sky-Knight
Back
Top