I will be running out of my subscription to McAfee in a month or so and need to know the best free antivirus out there.

Avg free does not check for rootkits nor does it check your downloads and I saw on another thread it slows down the computer.

Thanks in advance for your help.

I use clamwin

it's an open source program, meaning that anyone who is a software engineer can tinker on it to improve it

the last big research company I worked for used it and they were very happy with it

http://www.clamwin.com/content/view/18/46/

I don't think you will be in the mood to know why I am recommending this but the best one so far is Kaspersky Lab virus protection.I used to run Norton corporate in our offices which is extremely good but over the years the updates slowly eat up the memory and renders the computer slow. This one does not eat memory and is just as good
Take it from me I am your doctor

AVAST HANDS DOWN! It caught stuff Trend Micro PCCILLIN which is $50 a year missed!

It also runs a boot sector scan when you install it to make sure that viruses that lock themselves and activate when the computer boots up does not give the bug a chance to do its thing and allows for extraction of almost all of the toughest to get rid of malware. the reason I say almost is because there is malware that takes a lot more than Anti Virus to get rid of. Thankfully that Malware is very rare. Conficker C is an example of that.

The one thing Avast does that others to not is that it as a software uses a worm to search the internet for new malware types and sends the data to Avast so they can make an inoculation for your database and they do it well before the other companies even find out about many of the "in the wild" malware. It also doe snot bring your computer to a crawl like Norton does!

I hate Norton like I can't even begin to describe.


Avast Home is free, Avast Pro costs. Avast Home is what I use.

Check out their web site. AVG is decent but a joke compared to Avast. I tried AVG and was not impressed.

Kapsersky is decent as well but it can be a little aggravating because its scans are slow. I have used it as well but again Avast preformed a lot better!

you learn this stuff when you fix computers like I do. I have had to debug some pretty messed up computers. Avast saved a lot of them on the first pass. That time savings alone made Avast a money maker for me!

The slow ones are the free ones
The corporate version is fast and also deals with the issues in real time
Bloody computers

Thanks guys. I will check them out.

Has anyone tried the PCtools one?

I used to have Avira, a great program, but the last vista service pack rendered it useless, they are not compatible.
I'm now on avast and I love it. But I also run spybot search and destroy.

can anybody confirm if avast and avg can behave on the same system?

Probably not. Most anti virus will not support another full program at the same time. They negate each other out. So even if you got them both on the computer they would probably not do their job at all.

i know that mcafee doesnt like spybot from personal experience. anywho, it wouldnt surprise me if they didnt

I would go with AVG. To me all the others are just viruses disguised as protection.

I have Malwarebytes and Advance systemcare free on my computer with mcafee, they work okay together. Malwarebytes actually found some things that Mcafee missed.

I never trust just one program so I will have to have a combatible program to run with my antivirus.

My mom got a worm on her computer using AVG, we found that the free version doesn't check for rootkits or check your downloads. So I will not be using that free version.

Hmmm... I never had that problem.

I think NOD32 is worth paying for.

It installs a background service, which I'm not so fond of.

The best antivirus (free) I've found was Antivir.

http://www.free-av.com/

It's also the CNET Editors' Choice

Well that is funny. I run avg free version and every time i download something it scans it. So maybe you just do not have you setting in avg set correctly.

If you wanna go for free, I wud recommend AVG
if u REALLY wanna pay, just go for BitDefender...
AVG is very good bt the most reliable one is BitDefender.
Plus, many big security farms use BitDefender.... its very good. It also doesn't slow your computer...
AVG on the other hand works great for me bt sometimes slows down while scanning the whole system. Bt it free and I love it...

symantec(ic?) is really good. i know an IT that only uses that program.