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?

Comments

Avast

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.avast.com

Free for personal use.

avast the best free one with no lock down like avg

[Joe The Dragon]

avast the best free one with no lock down like avg8

http://www.avast.com/

I second the mention of ClamWin

[tepples]

When school required a Windows laptop, I used Clam AV

I second the mention of ClamWin. The biggest missing feature in ClamWin is scanning every file on fopen(), and that's what usually causes the resource hogging behavior that some people believe to be typical of antivirus. In my experience, a computer user really doesn't need real-time operation unless he's looking at pr0n (erotic web sites), downloading w4r3z (infringing copies of proprietary commercial software), or doing something comparably dangerous. A weekly full scan is enough.

Re:Clam AV

[Epsillon]

ClamAV, as it stands, does not do on-access scanning. I quite dislike the way the Win32 version (ClamWin) installs a little Clam icon into the system tray, as a false sense of security is worse than no security at all.

MoonSecure is a scanner/heuristics engine that uses Clam's signatures and does perform on-access scanning but, when I last tried it, it had "issues".

Avast is my current recommendation of the freebies for personal use, followed by Avira, if you can stand the constant nagging about upgrading to paid versions. Avira's detection rate, last I looked, was slightly better than Avast's but the nag screens are a bone of contention. Also have a look at Comodo's offerings. Note that none of these are free software, just free to use. MoonSecure is GPL'd and may have become a little better since I tried it, so it may be worth a shot if freedom matters to you.

Try this: no antivirus

[Matt Perry]

I'm serious. Stop doing the things that put you at risk for viruses and you won't have to run anti-virus. I don't run anti-virus or anti-spyware software on my computer and I've never had a problem. Occasionally, just to verify that I'm doing the right thing, I boot from a BartPE Windows CD and run anti-virus and anti-spyware tools against my hard drive. They never find anything bad. The last time I had a virus was in 1989 on my Amiga 500.

Re:You could use

[hairyfeet]

In case you wanted an ACTUAL answer,and not just a bunch of geeks shouting Linux I would suggest either Comodo if you would like one with a built in firewall,or AntiVir if you just need AV. As a Windows repairman I have used both on many customers machines and they work quite well.

I know that shouting "Linux" is a great way to Karma whore here,but the simple fact is I'm sure he asked about Windows Av for a reason. Sometimes Linux simply isn't the right tool for the job,as anyone who has tried to get those damned Lexmark all in ones to work or run into one of the bazillion SMBs that have custom VB apps that are mission critical can tell you.

Re:For perverse definitions of Easy

[blue l0g1c]

I'm going to ignore for a moment that you are ignoring all logical arguments contrary to your opinion.

No antivirus catches everything.

[modzer0]

I'm a malware researcher by trade and as such I see hundreds of samples per day that all get ran through an gantlet of anti-virus system. As much as I support open source and use Linux workstations with Windows in virtual machines to do analysis in I have to honestly say ClamWin is pretty much useless except for very old samples. In fact most anti-virus software is useless against new threats until someone submits samples to them and then it doesn't matter anyway because the people who write that malware see the detection after a daily run through virustotal.com and then they use a custom packer or PE armorer to change that signature so it won't be detected anymore.

The most effective methods I've seen is the behavioral and heuristic based systems in Kaspersky and Norton AV 2009's SONAR. SONAR may not catch it on execution but it catches registry entries and it's caught 99% of the bot samples I have when they try to call home. The new versions are also fairly light on system resources.

It may not be the popular opinion but if you really don't want to worry about malware then look at OS X or Linux. Yes there is some malware out there but in comparison it's a minute fraction of a percent of the number for Windows based systems.

No Easy

[Kludge]

Don't get me wrong, "Switch to Ubuntu" (or some other linux distribution) may be the perfect answers for this woman, and that would be great - but let's be realistic here and not label that as an easy solution.

Obviously if MS were "easy", this guy would not be posting a question to the this web site. Apparently neither he nor this woman know what to do about MS's glaring security holes.

I do not think that the parent post is saying Ubuntu will be easy. It was just easy for him to think of a solution.

Observations: AVG vs Avast

[SplatMan_DK]

I have tried both AVG and Avast, after choosing not to continue my TrendMicro PC Cillin subscription. I have also installed/tested both on computers belonging to friends and family. Here are a few of my experiences.

AVG good stuff:

• Good interface with all the bells and whistles a modern app needs
• Easier for end users to use than Avast (according to my mom and girlfriend)
• Finds more spyware and tracking cookies (I experienced Avast miss a real life spyware once, for about 22 hours until it was updated)
• Easy to install, even for end users

AVG bad stuff

• Users (including myself) experienced multiple browser crashes and computer stability issues. Problem first arrived with installation of AVG and disappeared when AVG was uninstalled. Coincidence? Not likely :-/ Acceptable? Not in a million years!
• The URL malware detection browser plugin is crap. It reads ahead every single URL on a homepage, and displays a little GIF icon with a checkmark when the URL is good and clean. Nice in theory BUT it makes your bandwidth usage explode, and makes browsing a drag - to say nothing of what the result must be for the owners of homepages you visit. Magically "all pages are now visited" by all users?
• Virus engine can not be stopped easily if desired. I sometimes play games, and being behind a NAT gateway I don't want my antivirus running alongside Day of Defeat, Natural Selection and Team Fortress 2. AVG is hard to disable, and clicking on the tray icon will only let you disable the management interface (and thereby the tray icon) while the scanning engine continues to run.
• Too many tricks and attempts to lure the user into buying the paid-for version. Almost resembles "legal phising" on occasion, which is kinda sad. Key information screens are supplied with "warnings" that you are using the free product.

---

Avast good stuff:

• Uses less resources
• Gets the job done without tons of bloatware and fancy extra browser plugins (easier to install without tons of fancy plugins and extra features which have nothing to do with basic virus protection)
• Can be disabled easily if desired, with right-click on tray icon. Good for gamers in their mid 30's who know what they are doing!
• No crashes and instability like AVG

Avast bad stuff:

• Interface less intuitive, says mother + girlfriend.
• Installation requires slightly more finesse as the installer is a little more confusing.
• Perhaps (?) slightly slower on updates. My mom had a malware file sent to her by mail, and it remained undetected by Avast 22 hours longer than an identical file on my girlfriends PC which had AVG.

---
At the end of the day, I went with Avast. Stability and low performance impact is more important to me than a fancy GUI. Clueless end-users disagree though, and actually want AVG back inspite of the stability issues. So the GUI really made a difference for them. They simply felt more "at home" with AVG.

Direct links for both products:
AVG Antivirus Free Version Download and Wikipedia Description.
Avast Antivirus Free version download and Wikipedia description.

brgds

- Jesper


(Experience is from: 3x Vista computers with reasonable hardware specs, and 2 older Windows XP computers)

Re:Easy

[c6gunner]

Have you actually tried googling for "Open Office"? The first sponsored link points to exactly what he was talking about - a third-party knock-off which requests personal info in order to let you download. I haven't tried signing up, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if they had all sorts of crapware bundled with it.

The problem isn't that his students are not careful, the problem is that:

1. Most people will click the first link on the page

and

2. Many people assume that sponsored links are guaranteed to be legitimate ("if its not legit, why would google let them advertise?").

Now, you could argue that such assumptions are dumb or ignorant - and I'd even agree with you - but blaming students from low-income families for not knowing the fine-points of internet use doesn't really solve the problem.