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Best Free Antivirus Software
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Introduction
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Antivirus software provides an essential layer of protection from a multitude of virus, trojan, worm, spyware, adware, dialer, keylogger and rootkit infections. Traditionally antivirus programs just detected viruses and spyware removers just detected spyware but nowadays the boundary between antivirus and spyware removers is unclear. Most current antiviruses have at least reasonably good detection rates of all forms of malware. Malware includes viruses, trojans, worms, spyware, adware, dialers, keyloggers and rootkit threats that perform malicious activities on a computer. With the huge increase in malware, antivirus software cannot keep up with detecting all of it. Despite vendor's claims, no single antivirus solution, or indeed any one security software, can be relied upon for total protection without safe surfing and computing practices. But using more than one real-time antivirus uses much more system resources, can cause conflicts and even reduce protection. So I recommend you only choose one antivirus for real-time protection. Instead, you can increase your protection using other security software; for more information check out our Security Wizard. I looked at several free antivirus programs which are vital in protecting your computer from virus threats and other types of malware. |
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Discussion
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The main downsides are the slow scan speeds and the lengthy amount of time it takes to quarantine malware, though in my opinion these are rather trivial concerns, as for example a scan just be run overnight. MSE also is not available in certain countries so users there will have to look elsewhere. Note that Microsoft Security Essentials requires a genuine copy of Windows to install.
Panda Cloud Antivirus has a behavioural blocker and web protection, which will certainly increase your security. However as you can simply use one of the other free AV's with a separate behavioural blocker (for further details see our Security Wizard) to achieve possibly even better protection, this is not necessarily an advantage. One minor reservation I have is that PCA seems to erroneously detect certain browser/system-related applications, for example VideoCacheView, and because of the automatic quarantine this made it a fraction bothersome.
However, there are some minor reservations. First, AntiVir does not include web or e-mail scanning capabilities; this is only available in the paid version. The lack of an e-mail scanner is not a disadvantage, it just means that AntiVir won't warn you of infected emails before you open them. But should you open an infected email, AntiVir will still spring into action, so it doesn't mean that you're not protected from email-based infections. Also, AntiVir contains a rather intrusive advertisement every time it updates. Although AntiVir had signature updating problems in the past, this issue seems to be fixed now.
These free antivirus programs are excellent software that provide a real alternative to the major commercial antivirus products. Please help us by rating this review |
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free antivirus, antivirus software, antivirus download, best antivirus software, anti-virus, anti-virus software, avast antivirus, avira antivirus, microsoft antivirus, free anti virus, anti virus software. |
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Please visit our freeware forum to share and discuss your views and get advice on free security software, including antivirus software. To post in the forum you need to register first but that's quick and immediate. |
Quick Start Guide: http://www.avast.com/download-documentation
Forum: http://forum.avast.com/
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free antivirus, best free antivirus, free antivirus programs, free antivirus program, antivirus software, free antivirus software, antivirus program free, anti-virus programs, antivirus scanner, best antiviros, best antvirus |
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I wish to praise all of the writers on this site. You have a very tough job. because there are people that don't agree with you. Then you have to put up with the criticism of those that don't agree with you. Like me........LOL You all do an awesome job.
Now for my criticism...LOL MSE has really fallen in there detection rates, I have run MSE on my system, and then ran all of the others behind it, to see what it missed. Every time I did that, it had missed something. Ease of use, does not make it a good anti-virus. I rank Avast as the best. That is a good call. It is just too much advertising for my taste though. From my testing, I would rank Avira number 2a, then AVG number 2b. I use AVG on my system. The reason I do is the ability to configure AVG to do what I want it to do. When I configure AVG to do a scan my way, it out performs all of the others. Panda is solid at number 3. MSE comes in at number 4. But MSE has become far to passive for me. At this point MSE does not even make it on my list.
If I could teach people how to configure AVG to scan my way, it would be number 1. God Bless you all for what you do!
Now for a request. It would be nice for this site to give a little lesson on how to use Task Scheduler within windows. I use it for so many things that do not have scheduled task within their programs. Examples : AVG does not auto update enough for my taste, so I use the task scheduler to do more updating. I also use it to run Ccleaner on a schedule. I think you would be doing the visitors of your site a great service, to teach them how to use the Task Scheduler within windows.
Thank you ALL so much for what you do!! I LOVE you all!!
It's a risky business looking at the various test results and then choosing an antivirus based solely on them. I'm in regular contact with many users of MSE, some in a businesses environment, and none are getting infected. The fact is that if your surfing and general PC usage habits are "infection prone", then you will be sooner or later no matter which security products are installed. It is also only of benefit to the community if you provide details about the "something" MSE supposedly missed, including the file path, and/or if like many Windows users, you have UAC disabled. :)
MSE is designed to work as an integrated solution alongside other Windows security services so it will always give weaker results when tested as a single entity.
In theory, MSE will always perform at a lesser level, especially where heuristic detections are concerned. There are however so many other ways to avoid zero day infections that blaming your AV for this is a poor option.
Certainly for the more tech savy, a program such as AVG offers the possibility for greater overall protection. This can also lead to a false sense of security however for the reasons stated above. For average users though who have only basic PC skills, MSE remains a solid choice for it's simplicity when employed with safe surfing practices.
Also, browser extension choice IMO plays as important a role as choice of AV and/or firewall.
More information here: MC - Site Manager.
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/safe-computing-under-hour.htm
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/what-else-have-you-just-download...
MidnightCowboy you are absolutely correct.
But if I were to give you all the technical aspects of how MSE fails on so many levels, it would take up this whole page and more. It is a mistake to disable UAC. Do NOT do that. I confess that I am not an average user. My rating system, that I gave, took the average user in mind. Otherwise, I would have put AVG as number 1. My parents are average users. They don't even know what a file path is. They have a false sense of security, because of their lack of knowledge about the Internet and the computer that they use. Every time I go to there house, I have to go through a whole cleaning process of there computer. They have one antivirus, I have six. AVG being the main one, then five scanners. AVG is NOT perfect, but none are perfect.
My point in responding , is to educate the average user without overwhelming them with to much of the technical aspects of using an antivirus program. But also to inform the more technical user of what might be a better choice.
I would advise anyone surfing the net to never feel secure. Just learn about the tools you are using to protect yourself.
MidnightCowboy, you are the best of the best. All my respect goes to you.
Thank you for responding. You are correct that our comments sections are reserved for just that and we always request more in depth discussions and other data to be posted in the forum. Many of our editors, including myself, do have direct contacts with vendors however and are more than happy to follow up information whenever possible. Please do post your scan results in the forum and we will then attempt to find out why MSE failed to detect them.
After my try with Avira, I am now considering whether I should change my AV. I like MSE for its non-intrusiveness, but the new versions rarely get released. Avira, on the other hands, has new versions more often, but it may have some annoying popups that I may not like too much.
I'm on a core I5 with 8GB RAM, Windows 7 Ultimate X64, and MSE didn't seem to eat too much resources, but I've heard from some of the comments that Avira doesn't use up as much resources as MSE.
Neil Rubenking has published an article in PC Magazine that some may find worthwhile, "The Best Free Antivirus for 2013" (2013.05.08) -- http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2388652,00.asp .
I have decided to change AV software and leave MSE behind.
I've had on-going Windows Genuine Advantage issues when MSE tries to update - every morning this week when I cranked up, I got the warning that I have to reinstall the WGA plug-in for Firefox or MSE won't work.
Regardless of the issues, it's time to leave...
So, a question:
Is it better to go with a new stand-alone top rated AV, or maybe move to a Zone Alarm suite?
By way of a little background on my schema now:
MSE running in real-time
PrevX 3.0 running in real-time
On Demand: Malwarebytes, EmsiSoft Malaware, Hitman Pro 3.7
I have used PrevX since their introduction and like it, so I would like to keep it going and obviously need something compatible.
Thanks, in advance, for your thoughts and input...
I firmly believe with a bit of common sense and safe practices you will be safe with a good free AV (any of the ones listed here). I think it's also important to note without those two things, the best paid security suite wouldn't fully protect you either. You have more than enough on-demand scanners as well. :)
There is some antivirus which slows down PC a bit as it uses more resource in your system while some don’t. Norton, MSE are such type of antivirus tools which will slow down your system. Immunet Free, Avira, Bitdefender etc. Are some antivirus which does not have much effect on computer speed and performance. Every antivirus tool automatically updates itself but you need to check automatic update box in software’s setting.
I personally use Immunet Free, here is a free download link to it - http://www.immunet.com/free/index.html
here is something you might be interested in.
www.raymond.cc/blog/which-free-antivirus-is-the-lightest-on-system-memor...
Not sure why Avast is at the top, even though Webroot clearly is lighter from the tests and is regarded to be the lightest antivirus of all time, both in terms of installation size and while idle/scanning..
I take back my words. I found that Avast flushes memory every 10 sec so the memory consumption will always be back to 5MB during scans (and never above 20MB), which I think is a great feature.
Avira have updated their Free Antivirus to v13.0.0.3640 (2013.05.07), 97.5 MB (off-line executable), a roll-up of product updates since the previous version's release -- https://www.avira.com/en/download/product/avira-free-antivirus (a 2 MB on-line installer is also available, as well as the User Manual).
Many find the pop-up nag screen that occurs with each update particularly annoying; a web search will provide the means by which to address this issue.
Thanks for the heads up!
9-Lab Removal Tool:
http://9-lab.com/about/#removal-tool
norton dns says that link is a malicious web site.
that's weird, now it doesn't have it blocked. maybe just a false positive?
It is a false positive. Notice that the Norton detection page also states: "characteristically". MC - Site Manager.
http://www.urlvoid.com/scan/9-lab.com/
https://www.virustotal.com/en/url/68ac017ac35b3ff5ec05f2f72032cda8dbd4c2...
http://zulu.zscaler.com/submission/show/6805474e9eda601b6627d225cdcb15dc...
thanks for the info mc.
keep up the good work.
I'm using MSE on Win XP, but i think it may be slowing my computer.
Also, you mention that "It automatically updates" and that for me is false. Windows update works but i have to manualy update MSE.
It's also weird that the security center sometimes forgets that MSE is running and then when i update it, it remembers. MSE also forgets that it has run a scan, saying it hasn't scanned in a long time, when the last scan says last night or some such.
I hate microsoft, but that's weird even for them.
Yes, MSE does slow down the computer a bit, I have observed that too.. specially in opening the folders with exes, and in other areas too.
About you facing other problems, I think you should re-install it once again. MSE updates via Windows Updates without any problems, and the scan time should also hold.
However, I have seen that MSE updates occur very very slowly sometimes, like painfully slow.
For what it may be worth, I have had Avira Free A/V running on about a dozen Windows boxes for several years, seven running XP (both Home and Pro). On machines with less than 1 GB of RAM and / or single-core, single-threaded processors, updates and scans do significantly impact performance.
The updates are a relatively minor issue, as they rarely take more than two minutes to completely install (unless one happens to be performing a processor-intensive task, such as video trans-coding); scans can always be paused and resumed later (and Avira A/V is highly-configurable in Expert mode, where, for example, the scan priority can be adjusted).
Without exception, there have been no malware infections in more than seventy machine-years of use. (To be fair, each machine also runs the Comodo Firewall, the Secunia PSI, WinPatrol, Firefox with NoScript, the Web Of Trust, SpywareBlaster and a secure DNS.)
Would Avast or Antivir be better for computer performance?
Yea, Avast or Avira are better :). Although, if it's a low end computer with P-III or something, or 512MB RAM, performance will still be affected a bit.
Any views on the antivirus component of Comodo Internet Security? I never thought it was that good (I use Avast free + Comodo firewall) but recently it's been getting good reviews.
Well in this test it came close to bottom although these things should always be researched a bit more deeply.
http://www.av-test.org/en/tests/home-user/windows-8/janfeb-2013/
Comodo's focus has always been on prevention as opposed to pure detection and when configured correctly by knowledgeable users will give first class protection. Achieving this status for average users though is quite a climb so unless they are prepared to follow the guides and read Comodo's own documentation, IMO they will be better off with one of the other solutions listed here. MC - Site Manager.
CIS version 6 has eliminated popups & now is easy enough for any/all users. AV has improved a lot & at par with other top AVs. Upcoming feature Valkyrie is excellent in detection/zeroday detection with very very very few/rare FPs.
About the AV-Test - Comodo Dev, Egemen posted in Comodo forum ---
Let me Share with you the detailed results:
av-test tested CIS 6 for 2 months, January 2013 and February 2013.
Here are the results:
January 2013:
1. BLOCKING OF "REAL WORLD" ATTACKS
Completely blocked malware attacks: 47
Partially blocked malware attacks: 7
Attacks not blocked (system got infected): 2
Protection: 54/56 - 96%
2. DETECTION OF PREVALENT MALWARE (STATIC AND DYNAMIC) - Standard Settings :
Detection Rate: 7423/ 7426 - 99.96%
False Positives: 22/293897 - 0.0074%
February 2013:
1. BLOCKING OF "REAL WORLD" ATTACKS
Completely blocked malware attacks: 62
Partially blocked malware attacks: 7
Attacks not blocked (system got infected): 0
Protection: 69/69 - 100%
False Positives(Behavior Blocker alerts):5/70 7%
2. DETECTION OF PREVALENT MALWARE (STATIC AND DYNAMIC) - Standard Settings :
Detection Rate: 10839/ 10841- 99.98%
False Positives: 22/308887- 0.0071%
As you see CAV detection rate is 99.9%. False positive rate is pretty low.
The only thing i personally care is the fact that in January, there were 2 reported infections despite CIS and these are fixed.
We are not allowed to disclose the others' results so hence cant compare with others too much. The main reason we look low on is false positive rate. Not the protection, not the usability you may think.
Let other vendors publish their own results and you guys compare and decide. When i interpret these results, i see a solid product within top 4 and in this top 4 CIS is the ONLY free one.
Unfortunately though it is necessary to compare apples with apples and not the orchard owner's interpretation of what came off the trees. In this respect AV-Test clearly states that:
Protection against 0-day malware attacks, inclusive of web and e-mail threats (Real-World Testing) was 84% and 90% for Jan/Feb when the industry average is 95%.
Also:
False blockages of certain actions carried out whilst installing and using legitimate software scored 5 when the industry average is only 1.
False positive detections were also more than three times the industry average.
http://www.av-test.org/no_cache/en/tests/test-reports/?tx_avtestreports_...
On this basis, the ZoneAalrm test results (which is also free) are higher:
http://www.av-test.org/no_cache/en/tests/test-reports/?tx_avtestreports_...
Of course you can argue all day about the relevance of these tests (and indeed others) to average home users but that is not the point in question here.
Also, when I look at these things I do not perform the exercise alone. In addition to my own installation I impose the software on a range of folks including friends, neighbors and ex customers who like to feel they are contributing to a service. The overwhelming feedback I get regarding CIS is how difficult it is to understand and configure. Admittedly this centers mainly on settings above the default configuration but the fact these are there suggests to any right minded person that the protection level must be greater when these are employed, otherwise why have them? This is when the majority of users get lost, and making wrong choices has the potential to damage their system or protection level thereof.
False blockage mentioned in AV-Test, I think they are talking about programs autosandboxed that didn't worked. I dont know how they count malware blockage by autosandbox i.e they count it as protected or missed due to inert files remains? (autosandbox protects from malware but some inert files may be there as autosandbox is a restriction thing).
If programs autosandboxed didn't run is count as false blockage, I think they should also count malware (active malware) blockage by autosandbox as protected, any info on this?
Offcoz higher settings than default increases protection. But I would recommend default as its very effective & easy in real world scenario.
Users who find configuration thing difficult or hard to understand, they will find configuration thing with any products difficult. Such users are/should not be advised to do so, default settings are carefully prepared easy/effective set of settings for such users, configuration or advanced settings are for, as the name suggests "Advanced" or expert users.
Have been a happy Avast user for years until now with the Avast 8 causing problems,am now using Zone Alarm free antivirus and firewall on midnight cowboys advice,all seems well so far. Using an old xp system run this with Malwarebytes free.