What's the current thinking on good, fast, effective virus scanning software for windows? Preferably free, or reasonably cheap? I quite liked AVG 7, but the new AVG 8 is very big, very slow, and very intrusive. On a friend's recommendation I tried Kaspersky 2010, but it's even bigger, even slower, MUCH more intrusive, and WILL NOT STOP SCANNING WHEN ASKED! I have to reboot the machine to stop it, the bloody thing completely ignores the 'for god's sake stop scanning now you bastard!" button. And when it's scanning the machine grinds to a complete halt for any other purpose.

At least AVG was reasonably accurate at estimating how long the process would take, this one seems to pull numbers out of thin air. On my games machine it was saying it would be finished in 10 minutes for about 14 hours And it finds all sorts of false positives it gets really excited about. Not impressed.

So, what should I be using? I'm going to try Avast as I've heard it's fairly good, but can anyone suggest something better?

pca

I use ESET NOD32 as its fairly low on resource consumption and non intrusive. I don't know what the current stats are for who detects/removes the most malware though.

I switched my mom to Avast a while back. It seems to be fine. I've also heard good things about ESET.

Microsoft now offers a free antivirus solution, called Microsoft Security Essentials. Haven't heard anything bad about it, and it seems it doesn't annoy the user like their previous paid product did.

No real personal recommendations though, my home Windows 7 install is used only as a Wintendo, with no internet browsing done, so I don't feel I need software slowing it down. If something does find it's way in past the firewall somehow, I'll just nuke and reinstall, something that Windows finds a way to make me do anyhow on a regular basis.

Another vote for ESET NOD32. Costs €30/year or something, but well worth it. You don't even notice it's there (which is the way it should be really...).

I use prevx. Sits in the background and checks anything loading against an online database, so always up to date.

I've used nothing but Eset since if first saw it noted here a few years back.

It's been getting more intrusive, but they let you dial in the amount of checking you can afford or desire. I turn of the mail and open of documents check. (gmail and very few untrusted docs).

I've recommended AVG for years. Now I recommend Microsoft Security Essentials.

But this is mostly for my work. It's easier to get people to switch from Norton and McAfee if they recognize the company making the alternative. Nobody recognizes Grisoft or AVG.

But beyond that, AVG is well on their way to becoming Norton and McAfee. Apparently they didn't realize that software bloat is the reason that a lot of geekier people used their software. In turn, because the geeks liked it, they recommended it to people they knew. I know that I've installed AVG on at least 100 machines over the years. Granted, they were all the free version, but I know that in one case it resulted in a purchase of the paid version.

Then there's the false positives. This past year has been bad for false positives in AVG. First, it kept catching a component of my favorite file copy/transfer program, Teracopy. I had to make an exception to the whole folder, which is not a good thing (and no, it's not a virus - Grisoft knows about it, says it's okay, but isn't doing anything about it). Then there was the big one where it detected part of iTunes. I suppose false positives are going to happen, but they never happened to me in the previous 5-7 years that I used the product.

Lastly, there's one thing about AVG that always annoyed me. Like I said, I've installed AVG on a lot of computers. Well every time AVG updates the free software and discontinues support for the old version, they give the user a popup notifying them of that fact. The problem is that this notice is always worded in such a way that it makes it sound like there will be no free version offered anymore, so the user should upgrade to the paid version. I can understand their desire to get people to start paying for the software, but they shouldn't do it by tricking people into it, and it becomes a pretty big deal every time they do it. The tech section of the Washington Post had a mention of it the last time it happened. I also start getting dozens of calls asking why their antivirus isn't free when I said it was. Now, with the release of AVG 9 (which has even more "features"), the clock is counting down until when they stop support for 8/8.5 and I start getting those calls again.

I really liked AVG, but it's no good anymore. I installed Microsoft Security Essentials mostly because I just don't care all that much, it seems pretty unobtrusive, and it's free.

I use nothing, but I've heard that Microsoft's Essentials thingy's OK.

AVG 9 is out - seems okay, and I have started looking at Security Essentials - but only running it on one of my test networks for comparison until I see how it pans out. Will update with results sometime:-)

I have been an AVG user for the past four or five years, and have found it to be exemplary in all regards.

Of course, you must understand that I had used Norton in the past, and (I am embarrassed to admit this) I even tried McAfee once because it came bundled free with some tax preparation software. After the nightmare of trying to purge McAfee from my computer (AVG now offers a free utility for doing that) I tried AVG and never looked back.

AVG turned out to be so unobtrusive and transparent (compared to Norton that takes over your whole computer, and McAfee that clings tenaciously despite every reasonable effort to remove it) that I upgraded from the free version to the "Pro" version, not because the Pro version offered anything I needed but because I was so grateful to them for getting me out of the hands of Norton and McAfee.

I am currently running AVG 9.0.664 and have not found it to be slow, big, intrusive, or any of the other bad things that people here have said. Of course, you have to remember what my basis for comparison is!

Do you remember back in the DOS and early Windows 3.x days when Norton Utilities was Peter Norton himself, and the package was a delightful and useful group of little standalone utilities that nobody who was comfortable with a C:> prompt could live without? Ahhh, the Good Old Days. I still say this whole Windows and GUI business is just a passing fad, and any day now we'll be back to C:> prompts and command line computing.

tanstaafl.

Those of us who use Unix never left.

Indeed. Terminal is pinned to the dock on all my machines, and I'm running bash scripts even on the home machine on a regular basis.

Both Norton and McAfee are nightmares to uninstall. However, both companies offer tools that will do it for you. I understand why, but I still think it's ridiculous that you have to download software to correctly uninstall other software. Anyway, in case anyone needs them, here are the links:

Norton - doesn't really matter which you click on, it works for most of them
McAfee - surprisingly, the McAfee tool (at least the one I keep on my thumb drive) is even better. You pretty much just double-click and it does its job.



Certainly it's better than Norton or McAfee. But I can see the direction they're going in, and it doesn't please me. Just look at all the stuff they're adding in here. A lot of that stuff looks like "features" they started adding into those Norton 360 packages a few years ago that made people abandon it.

Then there's little things. For example, I don't know how it is with 9, but at some point Grisoft stopped letting you download the full installer. It would download a small package that would then go out and download the program. I could understand this if it meant you got the latest version with all the updates, but I've found that you don't. What you get instead is an installer that you can't put on a thumb drive and take to someone's computer. I need that.

When it comes down to it, I still recommend AVG over Norton or McAfee. I can't tell you how many times I've seen those programs actually cause more problems than they prevent (slow machines, loss of internet, etc). But I'm going to try out the Microsoft application for a while. So far it appears to be even more lightweight than AVG.

AVG has the obnoxious LinkScanner feature which background downloads every link on a page. It totally screws with the web stats and generally sucks up bandwidth. You can't even filter it out since the whole point is that you can't tell whether it is AVG or a real browser.

This is what made me drop AVG.

I've been on AVG for years now, and when they came out with that 'feature' I opted out of it.
AVG *can* be installed without that option- you just have to avoid the generic 'install it like I don't know what you're talking about so just do what (the software company) thinks is right' method. I always go for the 'custom' install route so I can avoid any extra features that I don't like.

Apropos hard-to-remove software that everyone hates, I nominate Roxio tentacle-ware for worst ever removal PIA.

Did someone here previously recommend Avast? It's what I installed for a friend earlier this year. I think they've been ok with it since then. It's free, but you have to request a registration code yearly to keep it up to date.

I can't personally vouch for any of them because I've never run anti-virus software on any of my own machines.

I'd meant to mention the Linkscanner and User32.dll issues as two additional reasons I've soured on AVG, but my rants seem to be getting longer

Avast seems like a decent program, but I seem to remember the control panel for it being very odd.

Frankly, I can't say "good riddance" enough to companies like Norton. I'm certain that this MSE product is going to be huge, and that's without any push from Microsoft, who I'm certain will neither advertise the product or pre-install it on any PCs for fear of being spanked by the EU. That doesn't matter, though. Like I said, I'm going to have such an easy time convincing my clients to switch from Norton to MSE.

Microsoft say "This is really focused on the 50 to 60 percent (of PC users) who don't have, or won't pay for, antivirus protection, antimalware protection," in relation to MSE but that may just be to keep the legislators off their backs. Reviews of MSE seem to be generally good though and I'd probably recommend friends/family to use it after removing the Norton bloatware trial.

I do hope people realize Microsoft wasn't in trouble for bundling software with their OS, they were in trouble for various abuses of their monopoly power, including punishing OEMs who wanted to give consumers choice.

I understand, but I think they have a shorter leash these days because of that. I'm certain that if they included MSE with every copy of Windows 7 they'd have someone coming down on them


But all this stuff aside, can we talk about something more serious? The primary thing that has been bugging me about MSE is something very important: the taskbar icon. Really, Microsoft? Windows 7 is this pretty and you couldn't think of anything better than a two-color icon? I have it hidden at all times and it still bugs me.



On a related note, I've been amused that - since 8.0 or maybe 7.5 - AVG has changed their logo colors. They showed great creativity and took the Windows logo, flipped it, reversed it, and called it a day.

Really? I'll admit that the general Aero UI looks good, but the new taskbar thingy is awful. I feel like MS hired a design firm that started from the top down, and just before they got to the bottom, fired them and replaced them with a chipmunk.

I mean, it's significantly bigger, yet it contains less information?

I like it quite a bit, yes. No, it's not as pretty as other OS's, but everything's relative, and that icon is ugly in any OS

But yes, I think it's an attractive operating system, including the taskbar. I also appreciate the way the taskbar works, but lets continue this in another thread...