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Reliable, Free Anti-Virus Software?
oahazmatt writes "Some time ago my wife was having severe issues on her laptop. (A Dell Inspiron, if that helps.) I eventually found the cause to be McAfee, which took about an hour to remove fully. I installed AVG on her system to replace McAfee, but we have since found that AVG is causing problems with her laptop's connection to our wireless network. She's not thrilled about a wired connection as the router is on the other end of the house. We're looking for some good, open-source or free personal editions of anti-virus software. So, who on Slashdot trusts what?" When school required a Windows laptop, I used Clam AV, and the machine seemed to do as well as most classmates'. What have you found that works?
Well you already mentioned Clam AV. I use that myself. I'd go with that. Some of my friends use Avast, and I don't have a problem w/ that either, but Clam works for me.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
No, and besides being open source, ClamAV is rather unobtrusive, which is a feature I like. It doesn't get in the way. If I want it to scan something on-demand, it will through the shell extension it installs. I don't want something scanning every damn executable I click on.
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I would recommend Avira AntiVir [1]. It is free for personal use too. The was most impressed of the speed. I used Avira AntiVir all the time before I moved to Linux.
[1] http://www.free-av.de/en/index.html
I NEVER run background scanning on a virus program. It's a needless system overhead. When I get something new that might be suspicious, I simply run it on that specific program.
Only time I ever got a virus on the PC was about nine years ago when the virus program I used was running in the background, and let the CIH virus through.
Not to mention the many MANY issues virus programs cause with games. First thing any support message will tell you is make sure your anti-virus is disabled.
I'm trying to move from 32-bit XP to 64-bit vista, and one of the things keeping me from making the switch is trying to find a good 64-bit virus program.
I'm using ZoneAlarm on XP and one of the things I like most about it is the applications watching and firewall.
Having it authorize net access and system access is a feature I find very nice to have.
Unfortunately, it looks like ZoneAlarm is not in the 64-bit game.
Correction: They were beta testing a 64-bit windows version sometime ago but have dropped it completely with no apparent mention of trying again.
Currently for firewall on Vista, I use the built-in firewall with full deny by default and then configure applications to go through on a one-by-one basis.
But I really liked being notified when apps tried to do any potentially dangerous activities like run each time the system is loaded or modify the hosts file, etc.
So anybody got a good replacement on 64-bit Vista for paranoid users like myself?
Thanks in advance for any replies.
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This might be coming from left field, but your question struck me because I was having exactly the same issue (with exactly the same person, my wife).
Turns out the problem was our HP wireless printer. The drivers were causing network traffic that was causing my wifes computer to slow down. she also has a dell inspiron, but hers is a little old (1gb memory and 1.2ghz cpu).
The hp drivers were causing network traffic over her linksys wireless card, which in turn was using cpu cycles to support the wireless network traffic.
The problem was corrected by turning off the HP printer.
So, if you have a wireless printer, try turning it off.
This is my personal opinion, but the computer that runs the pro audio software should not be used for general computing use, and should never be connected directly to the Internet. If you can, have two OS partitions, one for normal computing use, and one dedicated to the music applications.
There are several reasons for this:
First, latency. AV software sucks CPU cycles, which adds latency. This is one of the musician's worst enemies. You want just the OS and the music software if possible. One single swap to disk may screw up a long mix you are working on. This is also why you want to load a music workstation with as much RAM as you possibly can.
Second, music programs are prone to crashing, especially with use of a lot of plugins. You want as few things that can go wrong as possible. Some programs not just work with tons of plugins, but bring with it a metric ton of DRM code, from CD-ROM copy protection, to USB dongles and the drivers those require. All this can conflict with A/V software.
Last, music programs do a lot of I/O. An AV program that hooks onto the system and scans every bit flying by a pipe in real time is going to put a crimp on matters.
For the music partition, if possible it should never touch the Internet directly... connect through another machine with internet file sharing, or best of all, a hardware firewall.
Another reason to have two partitions. You can boot the normal computing one, and A/V scan the one dedicated to the music apps which has a higher chance of detecting rootkits if any are installed.
I personally even recommend using a different operating system than normal for the OS partition with the music apps. If you have the volume license, WinFLP is recommended, as well as XP 64. If you need Vista compatibility, consider Windows Server 2008 which installs almost nothing by default.
This is why I wish more music companies would write commercial stuff for Linux. Linux is extremely low latency. Plus, its not like it doesn't exist. The Korg Oasys, their flagship $8500 keyboard uses Linux as its base OS.