Antivirus Recommendations / Condemnations

[Ronin Storm]

I've been using BitDefender as my antivirus protection. Started with BD2010 and moved on to BD2011 recently. The former crashed semi-regularly after extended uptime (>24 hours) and the latter crashes if it tries to do a deep scan. I was working around both but breaking point was achieved a few days ago when I realised that I couldn't install either of the two ArmA2 addons (British Armed Forces and Private Military Company) purely as a result of BitDefender.

So, back to the drawing board...

Any recommendations for a secure, high performance, very low problems antivirus protection? It doesn't need to contain a firewall.

Conversely, any AV software you'd recommend avoiding at the moment?

In the past I've tried AVG, whose performance was steadily nose-diving last I used it (18-24 months ago) and ClamWin, where I'm not sure on the breadth of their coverage from comments Haven made.

I was musing on WebRoot's solution but experience says that 30 days trial isn't enough time to know if an AV solution will be "very low problems".

 

[elDiablo]

...In the past I've tried AVG, whose performance was steadily nose-diving last I used it (18-24 months ago)...

I am currently using AVG Free, and it seems fine for me. It is never in the top 10 programs using CPU or memory (aka, it's memory is less than 20K, and CPU sits at 0%) for me (obviously, unless I am scanning). It picks up problems on webpages that are nasty trojans and the likes, and it never gets in my way. Big plus is that it is free. I recommend it to friends and family who ask for my thoughts.

Still, I know some people have gotten bored of it in the past, and refuse to use it now, so whatever

 

[SgtFury]

AVG free for me for numerous years now... no probs with it. Definetly better than any mcafee or Norton stuff I've had before then.

Just using Firefox with noscript stops soo much shit I'm sure.

 

[thatbloke]

I dropped AVG when it started throwing "you should upgrade!" popups at me.

I personally use the Microsoft Security Essentials - it sits there quietly in the background, has a realtime scanner, and can do scheduled scans as and when required. I quite like it

 

[elDiablo]

I dropped AVG when it started throwing "you should upgrade!" popups at me...

Really? I've never that... Unless you mean the upgrade banner in the main program's window... Which you can disable in the options...

 

[Spicypixel]

Kaspersky.

 

[Haven]

AVG would still be my recommendation - occasional ad-ware nonsense it spewed at one point seems to have calmed down. I've not investigated the market recently unfortunately so there may be new kids on the block who are worth a go. Avoid Norton and McAfee if you can.

Not going to list the other gazillion protections I've got running on the network - if you want help locking other things down then holler and I'll give some suggestions (you most likely know them all anyway ).

 

[Kasatka]

I use Comodo internet security, has some nice features such as a gaming mode toggle and fairly expansive logs and definable rules.

 

[thatbloke]

Really? I've never that... Unless you mean the upgrade banner in the main program's window... Which you can disable in the options...

There was a time where whenever I closed the main window of it it would pop up a window saying "Go pro!"

...binned it after the 2nd occurrence.

 

[AcidK]

Search and Destroy - Free, no 'trial period' or 'upgrade package' and it actually works.

 

[Spicypixel]

Search and Destroy - Free, no 'trial period' or 'upgrade package' and it actually works.

Not strictly an Anti Virus, merely anti spy/malware.

 

[Ronin Storm]

Some reading around indicates that Ad-aware Free Internet Security 9.0 may be a pretty good choice, currently. Any experiences with that?

 

[elDiablo]

Some reading around indicates that Ad-aware Free Internet Security 9.0 may be a pretty good choice, currently. Any experiences with that?

Used Ad-aware back in the day when it was just ad/spyware specific (used it along side Spybot and some form of AV), but recently saw it is now an "Internet Security Suite". If you do try it, thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[Cpt.Spazmo]

Trialing MS Essentials at the moment and it seems to be behaving. Avast isn't bad if you stop the "Avast has updated" robot voice scaring the cr1p out of you every time

 

[Chuchurocket]

AVAST VIRUS DATABASE HAS BEEN UPDATED!

Even with the annoying woman harping on periodically (which im sure can be turned off, or is eliminated in "gaming mode") I still recommend Avast. Not had any issues with it apart from 2 days ago when it said it was disabled, but a quick repair run from control panel and it was fine and dandy.

 

[[THN]Buffalo_Hunter]

Been using ZoneAlarm for the past couple of years and so far no complaints. One thing I have noticed is that the current version does an AV scan a lot faster than it used to.

 

[elDiablo]

AVAST VIRUS DATABASE HAS BEEN UPDATED!

Even with the annoying woman harping on periodically (which im sure can be turned off, or is eliminated in "gaming mode") I still recommend Avast. Not had any issues with it apart from 2 days ago when it said it was disabled, but a quick repair run from control panel and it was fine and dandy.

The sounds can be turned off in the options.