Which antivirus?

Hi. I've been thinking, which antivirus is better, avast! or AVG? (both free versions). Could you tell me from your personal experience? Or maybe do you know something better than these (for no cost, of course)?

The former Windows user:
It depends on your requirements. Avast! does not provide an on-access scanner, which means you have to scan everything manually. It also means there are no persistent processes, though, which is handy seeing as the OS and most related applications are bloat (iirc, there is a tray icon, but it does nothing and is safe to remove from the startup list. I used AVG, but if it was just me using the computer, I would have used Avast!

The Linux user:
ClamWin is probably the best open source option for Windows, based around ClamAV. I don't think it provides on-access scanning, but that shouldn't be a problem On Arch, I use ClamAV with ClamTK to run over files I use for Windows, and sometimes scan /home.

for no cost?... hmm....
on windows 7 there's a free "Kaspersky Anivirus for Windows 7" but I don't find the Download-link anymore
[maybe thatftp://ftp.kaspersky.com/products/english...r/kav2011/???]

Relying on an antivirus is always bad. I recommend you to:

- Install ANY antivirus, doesn't matter which. From your choices I'd pick AVG as avast! is quite limited in recognized threats (it's meant as a quick tool against CURRENT threats, but not a general purpose scanner), but Avira is nice too.

- Behave on your computer as if you DON'T have an antivirus installed, as no scanner is perfect and you may still be one of the first to get a specific new virus before the AV companies even get them, as the distribution is quite random. Still be careful with what you download. Still keep your system up to date. Do not disable automatic updates. Configure the Windows firewall properly (enabled, and only have those services enabled in it that you really need - as a rule of thumb, block anything you don't know what it is, and if anything breaks, you can easily unblock it again).

*I remember deleting my first virus without an antivirus software and without internet connection.
*It took a few days but in the end I got it! [I think that one: "Spyware.IEpass.thief"]

I'd go with AVG without second thought. I actually installed Avast on one computer it got infected to it's knees. I was almost ready to re-install the whole OS (I'm on Win 7). It was a virus that basically didn't let you do anything with your computer, it shut everything down.
Luckily that stupid bastard didn't work in fail-safe mode. So I went in there, installed AVG, manually got rid of what had found out about it previously. Installed AVG during fail-safe and got rid of the left-overs.

Avast had absolutely no brains as to what was going on and couldn't detect that virus. It was recently as well, just a week or two ago.
I've been relying on AVG for years now, I never had any trouble. It was because morfar said Avast is as good, if not better. That liar, I should kick him! ^_^

Check out www.av-comparatives.org to help choose an AV
I think keeping up to date on patches is more important than AV. I Use Secunia PSI to alert me when something needs to be patched.

Running Adblock and noscript with Firefox helps too.

i use macaffee , yer i paid for it $90 australian , but i run a buisiness :p
as an added bonus ya can put it on 3 computers
and it dont effect the game (as far as i can see)

(chooksta does not work for the above mentioned antivirus company)

t

:^

Anyway, it does not matter which AV you are using.

Some are better, others are worse. Viruses slip through all of them. No scanner gets 100%.

Often I get an E-Mail or IRC link which is OBVIOUSLY malware (someone with weird nickname PMing me an URL to an EXE is always malware), but I then tested the files on http://www.virustotal.com and only few of a huge list of virus scanners detected the virus inside.

Fact is, via Web, E-Mail and IRC you sometimes can get a virus before the AV companies got them. Do not rely on your virus scanner. Use your brain. The virus scanner is ONLY for those cases in which your brain failed!

Having said that, the probably top scanner is Kaspersky (but not free), mainly because it has the most frequent signature updates (every few hours, not daily like most others). Scanners you should avoid are Avast (not a full scanner), ClamAV (only good as email filter), Symantec (breaks your system). Anything else is up to you.

Never had trouble with avast. Although I heard it has a tendency to false positive
Didn't use avg. It broke windows once if I recall... Bad update...
Kaspersky: decent 2 years ago when I used it.
Micro$oft $ecurity e$$ential$: Don't know what to think about it...

The new version of ClamAV for windows, powered by immunet seems decent (but for everyday use?).
But well I'm only using Windows for gaming nowadays. When wine doesn't work or when I get a HUGE performance difference...
Currently using Bitdefender, no problem to report, got it on sale. only using it because of 3 computers/2 years licence because I admin a few systems here that needed "trusted" "install and forget" antivirus.

As divVerent said, use your brain! A "good" antivirus is only "false" protection.

I use eset nod 32. I have never had a problem with a virus since i have been using it.

Avira antivirus is good. I am also using it and my computer works fine without virus.

I install all of the free ones that I see getting good reviews, but I make sure to not allow them to run in the background in memory as a "shield" because that can result in annoying popup boxes notifying me to upgrade to the pro version, or it might simply make the computer sluggish.

I just spend an evening once a month to run multiple scans, or I run scans if my computer is acting strange.

On this computer, I am using avg, malwarebytes, super antispyware, adaware and spybot search and destroy.
I've used avira, avast and nod32 before, but it's not on this machine.

I have a handful of other utility apps I've used to clean difficult-to-remove malware from people's computers. I only run those when the other tools can't remove them. I find a lot of these tools from sites like http://majorgeeks.com

NOD32 is awsome.

The best 'free' antivirus is imo avast. More frequent updates and way more functionality than avg free (which is basically basturdised avg pro).

An amendment to my last post...

I just discovered that my main desktop PC was infected because a strange window popped up and suddenly I couldn't run any software.

I ran super anti-spyware, malwarebytes as well as a more serious anti-malware program called combofix. I found 3 trojans and 1 keylogger. I also checked the other computers in the house and one of them had a couple trojans and a worm infecting them.

Combofix only works on 32bit windows (2000, winxp and vista...possibly windows7 but I dunno). It is useful for removing things that are difficult to remove by the typical anti-malware apps, such as rootkits.

If you use combofix, don't get it from combofix.org. Apparently, that's not the real one. Get combofix from here instead http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/combofix/

Avast anti-virus is best, this anti-virus give complete virus protection in our computer, this software certified by ICSA Labs and West Coast Labs, it's installing and scanning processing is very easy, in this anti-virus many features and advantages has include.

Microsoft Security Essentials is excellent in the effectiveness department. It's second in malware removal only to Nod32.

Edit: It's also extremely light on resources.

Edit: Edit: Dang it, I just posted on a rezzed thread.

I'm ashamed to agree with spambot here , but I'd take Avast too. I'm not gonna blatantly advertise it like he/she/it did, but I would like to say that after trying out Avira AntiVir and AVG Free, I liked Avast the best.

There is a free version, and it is surprisingly feature-full for a free antivirus, and has no popup adverts or annoying promo ads (it only has an unobtrusive 1-2 inch-tall banner in the bottom of the main window, but that's it). It works well and it's not very resource intensive IMO.

Personal Antivirus Rankings:

1. Avast Free
   
2. Avira AntiVir Free & AVG Free (tied)
   
3. ClamWin (GPL'ed, but really isn't sensitive enough and seems a bit too glitchy for my taste)
   
4. Norton & friends (would be 143rd place, but I can't list that many antiviruses )
   

I like all free antivirus programs (well, except Norton), but I'd definitely give Avast a thumbs up (if this were YouTube, that is)!
NOTE: I only rarely use my Windows 7 partition for anything besides cross-platform debugging, C# programming (don't like MonoDevelop too much), and general gaming, so I may not be the best source on the subject of Windows antiviruses.