Guys - can anyone give me personal recommendations for free virus s/w? Any free ones that do the lot? - email scanning, period disk scans, script checking? thanks!
They won't do the lot but spyboth search and destroy and adaware are brilliant for removing trojans etc
I second Avast. I have used it for years and install it on every system that I work on. -ServiceGames-
Spybot and AdAware are not virus scanners and do not remove trojans. They are used for removing spyware, adware and hard disk chuggers. AVG Free is commonly recommended, as is Avast! I've installed ClamWin (based on Linux's ClamAV) before and it's good at the virus scanning part - however the update system is a complete pain. The problem is that most free scanners don't do everything - they try and get you to buy the full blown software to do all that. On my main machine, I use eTrust Antivirus with RealTime scanner, and that's excellent for everything - however I have no idea how much it usually costs (University freebie).
AVG anti-virus is very good. Only EVER put one anti-virus software on your computer. Spyware software is a different story, you may HAVE to use more than one to find everything! AVG anti-spyware is good, although it may have been a little better when it was ewido. Spybot S&D is good sometimes, although I still have issues with it. For some things, it's pretty much the only tool to remove them. Ad-aware went really poor, but it seems not too bad now. Still, I have issues with Lavasoft personally. To be honest, buying a 2 year AVG Anti-Malware is a good deal. It is cheap, and you get 2 years protection as opposed to 1 with most competitors' products. Also, you always get the latest version of the software for that 2 years (none of this oh, 2008 is out now, you have to buy an upgrade despite buying 2007 a month ago crap!). Oh, and 24/7 phone support!
My security suite is (all free) - Avast Home Edition - Spybot - Spyware Blaster - Ad-Aware 2007 - Windows Defender - Zone Alarm Free (Comodo Personal Firewall also good) - HijackThis Firefox with - NoScript - Mcafee SiteAdvisor - Adblock Plus You might think, damn all those things are system resource hogs... Not really. My jurassic PC (AMD 3200, 512mb Ram) runs all those with no problems.
I like the Microsoft Onecare Scanner. Type that into Google. It is a free, official Microsoft application that works via an Active-X plug in and a webpage. However, it does not offer real time protection (it will scan your system when you log into the page, but will not sit in your taskbar). It works very well, is fast and will fix your registry and defrag your drive if you so desire.
Spybot has removed may nasty items from my PC in the past./ At one time it was only Add-ware that it removed but now it does trojans, hijackers and of course add-ware. A very nice program tat is always updated to battle against the latest nasty items out there. Yakumo
Had Zone alarm for a while, it caused too many problems. The only reason I would see it have it is because it informs you when a program is trying access the internet, which comes in handy if you're trying to diagnose a trojan/virus problem. Besides that the free version is hard to configure properly (say for allowing traffic on a certain port for quicker p2p or torrent downloads.) Honestly you're better off paying the $50 a year and just getting Norton, however if that's not an option a combonation of Avast anti-virus, Spybot search and destroy, Adaware, and Hijack this! should keep you clean. The problem is you have to run each one because one program will pick up things that the others won't. Another bad thing is that sometimes these programs identify each other as threats - Norton seems to think that ComboFix is a Trojan horse for some reason. Also there's several different pretty nasty viruses that seem to be albe to outmanuver all of the free versions of these programs (variants of Nimda for example.) So it's always a good idea to get familiar with the normal running background processes on your machine so you can spot it when things are running funny.
:lol: I have yet to encounter a single properly-qualified professional who'll recommend Norton. Norton, whilst reliable, is a complete memory, processor and hard-drive hog - it is the reason why so many computers are grinding to a halt. It's badly written and over-expensive. Really, don't go down that route. It's the Microsoft of the Anti-virus world (ie: paid off computer manufacturers to get their software on machines, and gained recognition that way). They even force you to buy a new version every year just to keep it going. If you want to pay for one, go with CA Internet Security Suite Plus 2008 (formally eTrust and former-formerly McAfee VirusScan) - it'll do everything, support up to 3 PCs and comes with $10,000 worth of data insurance for $59.99 - and doesn't ever expire AFAIK. http://shop.ca.com/malware/internet_security_suite.aspx
Agreed, or if not Norton then Trend, McAfee, CA or similar. You can get the Norton security suite for around $25 OEM. BTW, I am a 'properly qualified IT professional'. :lol:
Guys - many thanks for all the suggestions, I'm going with AVG and Spybot. I guess a general train of thought is to have many, so I'll go with alot of what Johnny said too.. Cheers!
Then remind me not to ask for any advice j/k ...but really, Norton is a hungry, slow and cumbersome beast that'll only slow your system down. Somebody I knew got a brand new dual core Athlon with a fancy graphics card and Norton on which managed a lovely 17FPS whilst playing the main menu of Age of Empires III. With Norton gone and equivalent software in place - runs like a beaut, not laggy at all. Anyway - the discussion here is about FREE virus s/w. I think we've generally concluded that for Virus scanning - AVG Free or Avast! For spyware, etc. Spybot or potentially AdAware (although there are issues with the latter).
I agree it has a bigger than needed footprint, but there are plenty of IT professionals that use Norton in a corporate environment. A majority, even. If you compare detection rates of all the major anti-virus programs that consistently pound AVG/Grisoft in every test. Plus, you will see the disturbing number of files missed when AVG is tested. Of course, corporate AV is more sophisticated than home AV solutions, but the fact remains, and it is not because it was shovelware. Which equivalent software are you using? If you tell me AVG, I consider you either to be fibbing to win an argument or very naive indeed. How can a free anti-virus program offer the kind of coverage that a paid-for/subscription based solution can? Where do they get the money from to pay for the research and the virus analysis? Most free anti-virus programs rely on corporate anti-virus to form their definitions and base their updates on the ones provided to paid-for applications. I personally use McAfee at home, and it does a good job. I also run Windows Defender (free anti-virus that runs as a service) - I used to use Spybot and Adaware, but I don't find them to be as effective as Windows Defender. To get more on topic, if you intend to take the free route then you will want to have many different softwares running on your system to cover the short comings of the various programs and make sure you update you system as regularly as possible. Also, avoid warez :lol:
Yes, but corporations can afford to buy software year after year after year. Many home users don't want to spend $60 a year on Norton. I use Computer Associates eTrust, as it is low cost and highly, highly reliable. It's always up-to-date, low weight and inexpensive. If you're telling me a subscription-based system is necessary, tell me why you are using McAfee VirusScan - surely in your world that isn't supported anymore and requires you to subscribe to keep it up to date? I am not suggesting AVG is perfect, but it's free - and it's better than having no protection at all. I personally prefer ClamWin as my free AV - but it's irritating on updates (it requires you to update it manually).
