anti virus program

[Yves Larose]

Hi guy's, which anti virus program would you recommend me ?

 

[Warren Dawes]

I don't know much about most of them, but I use Avast. It's free and seems to do the job without being a resource hog or intruding too much.

 

[Omer Said]

I recommend Microsoft's Security Essentials. It's completely free (No different versions as free and licensed) and it works nice.

 

[Ryan Callan]

I use Panda Cloud. Tiny footprint and the free version is perfectly capable.

 

[Ondrej Kapal]

that new Avast was named as the best free antivirus nowadays and is czech product
or you can use AVG Free also czech

in commercial it is hard to say I was using Eset SS4 until I stopped paying for it and downloaded Avast

 

[William Elgh]

a werry powerfull, free virus scanner is MBAM get it here http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php

 

[Nick Deeley]

My vote for Avast.

 

[Freddie Besems]

Avast internet security. (paid version) but the free Avast, works also very well.

 

[Péter Bártfai]

I used free Avast for a very long time, worked OK, but I got viruses (probably) from time to time! Last one deleted boot.ini, confused mouse, etc... (at least I think it was a virus, cause it's gone with my fresh install of Windows)
Now I use AVG, I wonder how it'll go, tbh it surprised me yesterday as I was downloading Winrar from winrar.hu, and when I tried to install it it said it has a troyan in it... uhh... now looking for another Winrar site

Edit: (ouch, it has a troyan even from the official site, called PWS SpyEye)

 

[Dave Stephenson]

It could be a false positive. You can submit it to to the antivirus makers for a closer look.

7zip will do all the file types winrar does and more. Plus the 7zip compression creates smaller archives too. http://www.7-zip.org/

 

[Jim Cole]

I have had no issues with Avast and have been using it for a bit now. I haven't tried AVG, but I hear it does well too. There isn't an anti virus software out that will trap all of the virus's 100% of the time. In order to ensure that your system stays clean there are a couple of things I would recommend and even that isn't a sure thing.

First off, if you are not already using one, get a router and connect to the internet through that. This will make your system less visible to threats. Second, do a full scan with anti virus as well as with malwarebyte's software to ensure that if something made it through, you find it quickly and can get rid of it. Third get the program "hijackthis" and install it. It will look for threats that are not virus's but programs that hijack your browser and will stop them.

Lastly, avoid going to sites that are potential threat areas. torrents, porn, hacked software all have a greater potential of having a virus than regular sites. If you must go to those sites, I would suggest that you run your browser in sandbox mode which is an option for Avast to use. This will prevent anything from being saved once the browser session is closed reducing the chance of getting a virus.

Now as to your issues with your system, there is a strong possibility that you did not have a virus. Corrupt drivers tend to be identified as being infected with a virus even though there is no virus in the system at all. Corruption can happen at any time with no reasoning for it. A lot of the virus's out there are not setup to mess with your system. They are designed to get information from you that the author can use at a later time. A smart virus author will write his virus so that it will be almost invisible to ensure a longer life on your system increasing the odds of getting useful information.

 

[Oops]

Thanks JIm for the heasds-up on the hijackthis instaling it now