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Good Free Antivirus

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bass1175
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Good Free Antivirus

#1 Post by bass1175 » Wed Jan 30, 2013 5:10 am

I hope moderators dont mind this post, but thought this might help protect our T series.

Bitdefender has recently released ( December 25th 2012) free antivirus, its supposed to be as powerful as the paid version.

I started using this company's scanner after a Trojan went under symantecs radar and infected my notebook.

BD picked it up immediately and been a believer since:)

Good reviews by security firms are on youtube.

Just wanted to pass this down.

http://www.bitdefender.com/toolbox/freeapps/desktop/

Enjoy.

Admin note: Don't mind the thread but I moved it from the T400/T500 forum to here.

Medessec
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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#2 Post by Medessec » Wed Jan 30, 2013 4:25 pm

I personally believe Anti-virus is highly unnecessary for the tech-savvy user. (I assume most of us on here know their way around safe mode and a Windows setup disk)

However-if you are in need of Anti-Virus, I generally believe Avast! is the ultimate choice. I've only had problems with AVG, and... get this, paid anti-virus software. I haven't tried this Bitdefender... I may have to look into it.

Antivirus only helps a little in that if you're browsing the internet stupidly, or downloading things with bloatware/adware in them(or if your kids or others are), Antivirus helps out with that. But at the cost of a huge amount of system resources, as it runs in the background, needs to start and load everytime you start your computer, reducing boot times. If you have an older computer, there's no chance of you running Antivirus tolerably. Most Antivirus also has a firewall system, which bodes terribly for your gaming, or even normal needs, such as router configuration and internet troubleshooting.
Trying my hardest to collect Thinkpads, but college and being broke kinda gets in the way. However...
701C, 760, 770, X24, T30, G41, A31p, T43p, T60/61 Frankie, Z61p, X60 SXGA+, W700ds
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and yes. I am a bit of a lunatic.

killer
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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#3 Post by killer » Wed Jan 30, 2013 6:14 pm

MSSE works well for me and it is free.
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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#4 Post by bass1175 » Wed Jan 30, 2013 7:29 pm

Agree on most paid AV scanners are so heavy on system resources, it seems they think the more menus and processes running the more attractive it looks to users.


This last Trojan I got was thru a USB thumb drive and I didnt think twice to plug it in as I had Symantec on board, but it totally missed it.

I then uploaded the exe to an online scanner of 17 AV companies and bitdefender was one of two that picked it up out of the 17, which is when I started looking into BD.

I think its plays well with system resources, its very light weight.

Yes, I have other users in the house so this is a must for us, also theres a new thing now, where you go to download something and you are given 4 download buttons that can easily lead the average user to a false download.

But thought BD was pretty good considering it was one of the few that did its job and it was for free.

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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#5 Post by Medessec » Wed Jan 30, 2013 8:51 pm

Hmm. I've never gotten a virus via USB drive... that's very intriguing. But indeed-I suppose with your testimony, I'll have to look into it.
Trying my hardest to collect Thinkpads, but college and being broke kinda gets in the way. However...
701C, 760, 770, X24, T30, G41, A31p, T43p, T60/61 Frankie, Z61p, X60 SXGA+, W700ds
MEDESSEC

and yes. I am a bit of a lunatic.

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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#6 Post by bass1175 » Thu Jan 31, 2013 12:44 am

Really? No way it can infect a machine with Autorun? Or even as simple as being transferred in a rubble of Media?

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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#7 Post by crashnburn » Fri Mar 08, 2013 5:49 pm

I've gone this way: AVG Free > Avast Free (Both got ugly) so now Avira Free (after reading all per AV Comparatives Reviews).
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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#8 Post by Medessec » Fri Mar 08, 2013 8:16 pm

Weirdly a lot of new alternatives of free antivirus are popping up. It's mostly a bunch of original Paid virus programs now creating lower-end free versions.

I don't use Antivirus at all, so it's mostly down to others' testimonies.
Trying my hardest to collect Thinkpads, but college and being broke kinda gets in the way. However...
701C, 760, 770, X24, T30, G41, A31p, T43p, T60/61 Frankie, Z61p, X60 SXGA+, W700ds
MEDESSEC

and yes. I am a bit of a lunatic.

Cigarguy
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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#9 Post by Cigarguy » Fri Mar 08, 2013 8:57 pm

I'm comfortable with MSE. It's free, fast and good enough. If and when I feel inclined to surf higher risk sites or if I'm running suspect devices, well that's what the Linux Thinkpad is for.

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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#10 Post by ganon11000 » Fri Mar 22, 2013 3:12 pm

Avast have the best detection rates and a website to manage all your PCs in one place (useful when you have 4 computers and 2 android devices) not to mention 100% free and I got free internet security for referring 7 users (I'm not going to push my luck by posting a link no matter how Much I want to :p )
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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#11 Post by ProTech2000 » Mon May 20, 2013 12:49 am

Hey gang, newbie here, couldn't find the "welcome center" so I will just jump in here... Looks like this is a pretty old thread and probably run its course, but for me it's Ubuntu or if I am running my windows machine it's ESET!!!

/me climbs off his soap box.
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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#12 Post by TTY » Tue May 21, 2013 11:11 am

crashnburn wrote: so now Avira Free
My experience with Avira has been that you get virus definition updates for free for a couple of months. And every day, you get an advertisement to buy the full version. After a few months, when they realize that you aren't going to buy the full version, they stop giving you the daily virus definition updates.

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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#13 Post by GACrabill » Tue May 21, 2013 9:22 pm

TTY wrote:My experience with Avira has been that you get virus definition updates for free for a couple of months. And every day, you get an advertisement to buy the full version. After a few months, when they realize that you aren't going to buy the full version, they stop giving you the daily virus definition updates.
I've been using the free Avira for many years ... I always get daily updates. The only thing that I can think of for your "experience" is that you ignored their messages to update to a newer version of the free product. They probably don't update the 2010 version daily anymore. As long as your version of Avira is current, you will get updates daily. If you NEVER want to have to install newer versions of a free anti-virus product, then MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials) is the only one that I know of that will do the updates to new versions automatically.

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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#14 Post by jcvjcvjcvjcv » Wed May 22, 2013 12:57 am

I've never had a problem with viruses, with or without a virus scanner.

On the other hand there are people that install viruses on their computer, regardless of whether or not they have anti-virus or not. It (almost) always comes down to user stupidity. Since I'm the only user of my computers, there are exactly zero naive people using my computer.

I have that stuff from Microsoft Security Essentials. Not that it ever found something... but that's probably because there's nothing to be found.

Most anti-virus stuff is just a giant suck of resources (cpu cycles, RAM bandwith, disk activity) and thus battery time. No thank you.
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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#15 Post by uberT » Wed May 22, 2013 6:32 am

Avast! has stopped all issues on our home machines :)
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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#16 Post by dr_st » Wed May 22, 2013 7:12 am

bass1175 wrote:Bitdefender has recently released ( December 25th 2012) free antivirus, its supposed to be as powerful as the paid version.
I recently moved to BitDefender free on a few systems, having decided that I'm fed up with Symantec's resource-hogging, IO thrashing, and seemingly unstoppable scans when it just decides it has to do it after you wake up from sleep.

So far it's been OK, not too heavy, caught a couple of things (but also had a few false positives).
bass1175 wrote:I started using this company's scanner after a Trojan went under symantecs radar and infected my notebook.

BD picked it up immediately and been a believer since:)
This in itself does not mean much. There are always trojans that will slip past some app's radar, and another AV will pick them up. You will not be able to find one that is perfect, it's just a matter of it being good enough. I've had Symantec catch malware that was slipping past other utilities, and vice versa. Same about false positives.
Medessec wrote:I personally believe Anti-virus is highly unnecessary for the tech-savvy user. (I assume most of us on here know their way around safe mode and a Windows setup disk)
That's almost true, unfortunately not always. First of all, many of us are tech-savvy, but share their PC with someone who is less so, and just might "browse the internet stupidly" as you say. And even us savvy people can make mistakes or let something slip.

Let's just say a good antivirus will catch 95% of the stuff and let 5% slip, and a smart user will catch 99% of the stuff and let 1% slip. Together, they will catch 99.95%, and only 0.05% will slip - that's 5% of 1% - better odds. :)

Being able to fix some viruses after they already hit the system is important, however it won't help you if you just happened to catch a virus that's actually damaging to the system and not just crippling/annoying. My AV-free run ended by choice a few years ago, after I somehow got hit by something that just started corrupting and deleting EXE files all around the system. By the time I caught it the damage was already done. No amount of knowing my way around safe mode could help me then - I had to restore from a backup.
killer wrote:MSSE works well for me and it is free.
I tried it a couple of times, but didn't like that it seemed to have a strong preference to start crunching its updates every time I wake up the PC from standby/hibernation, which would badly affect my battery life. Plus it seems to consistently get terrible scores in AV effectiveness comparisons.
bass1175 wrote:Really? No way it can infect a machine with Autorun?
This is actually very common.
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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#17 Post by GACrabill » Wed May 22, 2013 9:06 pm

bass1175 wrote:Bitdefender has recently released ( December 25th 2012) free antivirus, its supposed to be as powerful as the paid version.
dr_st wrote:I recently moved to BitDefender free on a few systems, having decided that I'm fed up with Symantec's resource-hogging, IO thrashing, and seemingly unstoppable scans when it just decides it has to do it after you wake up from sleep.

So far it's been OK, not too heavy, caught a couple of things (but also had a few false positives).
After the original "bass1175" post, I decided to try the free BitDefender. I found that the reasons that "dr_st" removed Symantec were the exact same reasons that I removed BitDefender-free two days later. Plus, there seemed to be NO user settings in BitDefender-free.

The major PITA with BitDefender-free was its "seemingly unstoppable scans when it just decides it has to do it after you wake up from sleep". I have seen this behavior on many other anti-virus products and its effect on my productivity will not be tolerated. Therefore, I place either Avira or MSE on all PCs that I fix for other folks.

One other comment :
If you still have any "Java..." products installed (this does NOT apply to JavaScript), it is only a matter of time before you will be infected by a zero-day virus .... and many of those are now destructive rather than just being a nuisance.

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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#18 Post by dr_st » Thu May 23, 2013 7:20 am

GACrabill wrote:The major PITA with BitDefender-free was its "seemingly unstoppable scans when it just decides it has to do it after you wake up from sleep". I have seen this behavior on many other anti-virus products and its effect on my productivity will not be tolerated. Therefore, I place either Avira or MSE on all PCs that I fix for other folks.
I will have to use BitDefender free for a bit longer before passing final judgment on this point. They do claim that they use an algorithm which only scans when PC is idle. So it should not impact productivity, however it will impact battery life.

If BitDefender fails me, I will have to try Avira, as you claim it does not have this bad behavior (or it can be turned off). MSE was just as annoying with its forced, not configurable updates as other AVs are with its scans, so I stopped using that as well.
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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#19 Post by crashnburn » Fri May 24, 2013 8:55 am

Avira Free is what I use now. There is a pop annoyance that can be fixed with some hacks (available online).
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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#20 Post by dr_st » Thu Jun 20, 2013 4:07 pm

Well, the BitDefender experiment is officially a failure for me.

The app crashes consistently every time I try to run a fullscreen application (this is on my T60). And sometimes it crashes or becomes irresponsive or loses connection to the account for various reasons.

Maybe I'll give Avira a try... Although I'm starting to like the AV-free experience... :)
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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#21 Post by Nigellus » Mon Dec 16, 2013 5:28 pm

I've had to wipe my HD and start with a clean install. So I'm in that idyllic phase where I don't have any av software hogging up my resources, interfering with internet connectivity, or crashing whatever program I have open whenever it wants to update itself (several times a day for avast no matter what I put the settings at).

I'm running xp pro. I don't know if that's the reason, but avast, which used to be stellar (I replaced AVG because it had ceased to be useful), is as disruptive to my computer use, and as detrimental to my productivity as an actual virus.

It looks like the folks around here are recommending avira?
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Computers do exactly what you tell them at amazing speeds; this can be bad if what you told them wasn't what you had in mind.

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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#22 Post by RealBlackStuff » Tue Dec 17, 2013 8:20 am

Avira? Maybe just for a trial.
I'm still going with M$E (Micro$oftEssentials) which is a freebie.
Been using it for over two years now on all desktops and laptops in the house.
Not a single problem so far (touch wood).
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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#23 Post by GACrabill » Tue Dec 17, 2013 9:01 pm

RealBlackStuff wrote:Avira? Maybe just for a trial.
I'm still going with M$E (Micro$oftEssentials) which is a freebie.
Been using it for over two years now on all desktops and laptops in the house.
Not a single problem so far (touch wood).
Avira is also free ... but I now consider AVG, Avast, and Avira to be products for advanced users. All three of those seem to require : downloading the newest version each year, uninstalling the old version, re-boot, install the new version, re-boot, full scan. That's too much work for most of the folks that I deal with ... so I place MSE on all of their PCs, which is free, daily updates, automatic weekly scans, usually transparent upgrades to new versions, etc ... a much easier free anti-virus solution for 95% of users.

Everytime that I find AVG or Avast on a PC, I am surprised by their memory working-set-sizes.

MSE and Avira seem to be much lighter for resource consumption.

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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#24 Post by Nigellus » Wed Dec 18, 2013 11:56 am

GACrabill wrote:
RealBlackStuff wrote:Avira? Maybe just for a trial.
I'm still going with M$E (Micro$oftEssentials) which is a freebie.
Been using it for over two years now on all desktops and laptops in the house.
Not a single problem so far (touch wood).
Avira is also free ... but I now consider AVG, Avast, and Avira to be products for advanced users. All three of those seem to require : downloading the newest version each year, uninstalling the old version, re-boot, install the new version, re-boot, full scan. That's too much work for most of the folks that I deal with ... so I place MSE on all of their PCs, which is free, daily updates, automatic weekly scans, usually transparent upgrades to new versions, etc ... a much easier free anti-virus solution for 95% of users.

Everytime that I find AVG or Avast on a PC, I am surprised by their memory working-set-sizes.

MSE and Avira seem to be much lighter for resource consumption.
That's what I'm after. I'm tired of my computer becoming non-responsive every time avast decides it needs to do something. It's seriously like having a virus (does anyone know what happened to avast? It used to be so good?).
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Computers do exactly what you tell them at amazing speeds; this can be bad if what you told them wasn't what you had in mind.

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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#25 Post by mattdocs12345 » Wed Jan 15, 2014 8:48 pm

BitDefender Free - very light on resources, very fast but no quarantine and sometimes buggy
Forticlient - very reliable, very few false positives but heavy on resources
Avast - yearly registration required, very light on resources
AVG - dont know much
MSE - don't bother unless your supplement it with MBAM Pro realtime

If you don't want to use AV then I would suggest something else such as:
- HIPS + FW or
- AntiExecutable (No Virus Thanks or AppGuard) or
- something that virtualizes your system (SBIE, Shadow Defender) or
- LUA + SRP + K9 Web Protection

If you want to run your computer with least resource usage then I would suggest LUA + SRP, K9 and Bitdefender Free.
AVs eating up a lot of resources is a thing of the past (except Forti :). Most run very smoothly... The days of Norton taking over the computer are gone. Norton actually is one of the lighter ones.

And last one thing. If you are wondering what is that fastest and the least resources hungry AV then give ESET a try. It's a paid AV however but you won't be disappointed.

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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#26 Post by RealBlackStuff » Thu Jan 16, 2014 9:34 am

Why do you keep promoting those exotic products that nobody's heard off, do you work for them?
I threw ESET out because it was too CPU- and resource-hungry and also too expensive with just not enough 'extras', compared to a freebie.
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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#27 Post by Medessec » Thu Jan 16, 2014 10:36 am

does anyone know what happened to avast? It used to be so good?
Pff. Antivirus programs nowadays just assume you're using a newer computer and rat you out if you call them and complain-blaming you for using something old. They love to abuse the living ***caught expletive before too late*** out of the limitless resources that newer computers have to offer, placing background operations here and there, and having the antivirus check and download a new database every single time you log on, to make sure their antivirus is better than the next one.

MSE by itself is probably as far as I'll ever go. I don't like having an Antivirus telling me all the time, "this file is risky!" or, "we Quarantined this file to protect your computer". I do a lot of gaming, and I also work with a lot of random tools and older versions of productivity software, and half the time a "good" antivirus will cripple my programs, stealing their .exes and putting them in Quarantine because they "thought" they were unsafe according to an endlessly massive and over-sized database of "known" viruses.

As I've mentioned before, I AM my OWN Antivirus. I can deal with viruses that blatantly affect my computer's operation, and I have alerts for my bank information, and I do take great care in what I do on the web. And if it ever gets really nasty, I have my W700ds to fall back onto, and Windows recovery disks to help heal my horse's broken leg. Plus, I have a Solid State boot drive, and all my important programs and information are on my two HDD drives in a redundant fail-safe. All I have to do is reinstall Windows on the SSD, install a couple of programs and personal settings, and I'm good to go.

Good luck cruel world, taking me down.
Trying my hardest to collect Thinkpads, but college and being broke kinda gets in the way. However...
701C, 760, 770, X24, T30, G41, A31p, T43p, T60/61 Frankie, Z61p, X60 SXGA+, W700ds
MEDESSEC

and yes. I am a bit of a lunatic.

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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#28 Post by Cigarguy » Thu Jan 16, 2014 11:29 am

Medessec wrote: Good luck cruel world, taking me down.
On the contrary, you will live a long happy life without worrying about the boggy man around every corner. You will live a life of a man who's learned to be a competent operator who's come to terms with the risk of living instant of being an incompetent paranoid schizophrenic. A man who could relax and enjoy a fine cigar at the end of the day rather than one who worries whether the last Windows update prevented Armageddon.

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Re: Good Free Antivirus

#29 Post by Penultimate » Tue Jan 21, 2014 8:55 pm

I install 'Avast' and 'Zone Alarm' on every computer I set up.
There is no confirmation for the Avast yearly re-registration... you can put in elmer_fudd@whitehouse.us as your email if you want to and it renews the registration for free.

If you dont download any programs or video, or search filestube etc.. you could probably get by with Zone Alarm alone. Considering the user base of this web site needs a warning for threads with pics that will need to load, suggesting that "I never get a virus on the internet without any antivirus installed" may hold true for many of the users here, but its due to their unique, restrictive habits not the lack of opportunity.

I dont trust MS built in products to do the job though and im not a tin-foil hat wearer, but given the potential for backdoors I would rather go with a 3rd party option

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Location: TX, USA & Bombay, India

Re: Good Free Antivirus

#30 Post by crashnburn » Fri Jan 24, 2014 2:33 pm

TTY wrote:
crashnburn wrote: so now Avira Free
My experience with Avira has been that you get virus definition updates for free for a couple of months. And every day, you get an advertisement to buy the full version. After a few months, when they realize that you aren't going to buy the full version, they stop giving you the daily virus definition updates.
Been using for more than an year now. Which version did you install?

Also, there are hacks to stop the popups and reminders. I selected it after extensive reading of AV Comparatives Tests (Google for it). I chose it for being the LEAST BLINGY, NON COLORFUL and CLEAN UI.
T61 8892-02U: 14.1"SXGA+/2.2C2D/4G/XP|Adv Mini Dock|30" Gateway XHD3000 WQXGA via Dual-link DVI
X61T 7767-96U: 12.1"SXGA+/1.6C2D/3G/Vista|Ultrabase
W510 4319-2PU: 15.6"FHD/i7-720QM/4G/Win7Pro64 (for dad)
T43 1875-DLU: 14.1"XGA/1.7PM-740/1G/XP (Old)

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