[maxsteele77]

I'd like to know what people think is the best free anti-virus program?

[Gmanson]

AVG AntiVirus.

[Goku]

My vote goes to Avira AntiVir.

-- Goku

[comgeek888]

Threat Fire
ThreatFire's patent-pending ActiveDefense
technology offers protection against all types of internet threats - both known and unknown - spyware, adware, keyloggers, viruses, worms, Trojans, rootkits, buffer overflows, and other malware.
http://darfuns.com/download-threat-fire/index.html

[zapp22]

Goku is well senior to me so defer - but I use, recommend, install on machines I repair Avast Home Edition. It was an excellent product four or five years ago - its better now. Does a LOT of protection in a relatively small footprint, very flexible, and the company stays right on the edge of threats - very vigilant.

I hear great things about AVG but have no direct experience. It is very popular...

[1002richards]

Hi,
There's a list in the 'sticky' in the Security forum here that lists recommended progs, http://forums.techguy.org/general-security/603629-security-help-tools.html

and in addition there are excellent reviews of free security progs at Tech Support Alert:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/pc/security-tools.html

[aka Brett]

all the big A's are good
i used avg for ages and have recently been using avira.

[atnskyline]

avira is best for on demand scanning, avast is best for real time protection. avg is.......not as good. i advise you to get threat fire also, it doesn't matter if you use it with another antivirus b/c it scans base on how the programs act towords files instead of outdated definitions. it is really an innovative feature. http://www.threatfire.com

[Kenny94]

Originally Posted by atnskyline

avira is best for on demand scanning, avast is best for real time protection. avg is.......not as good. i advise you to get threat fire also, it doesn't matter if you use it with another antivirus b/c it scans base on how the programs act towords files instead of outdated definitions. it is really an innovative feature. http://www.threatfire.com

Here's a excellent post than will help you understand having two antivirus program installed, and having one for On-Access and disable the other antivirus program for On-Demand Scanner that is not design for On-Demand Scanner only...That I posted for you before atnskyline.

It seems everyone has their favorite free antivirus application. AVG, AntiVir, Avast. So, why can’t I just install them all, and enjoy the benefits of each? After all, they’re all free.


The short answer. Don’t install more than one anti-virus. They may conflict, and will provide less protection, not more.

The longer, technically correct answer. Yes, it is possible in most cases to install more than one anti-virus. Provided that only one real-time scanner is active at a time, and the others are used only to scan on demand. However, pre-Windows Vista, all anti-virus programs made changes to the Windows kernel. Or, the very core of the operating system. One application doesn’t know what changes the other has made, and they are likely trying to affect the same code. This can lead to system slow-downs, instability, and crashes. Or even the loss of all anti-virus protection.

Keep it simple. Chose one anti-virus that you like, and stick with it.

http://www.whatthetech.com/2007/10/2...ne-anti-virus/

[atnskyline]

yes but threat fire was designed to complement other apps, not be its own. and that only applies if they work the same way. but threat fire worksa differnet way so it won't interfere with the main program. what you said applies for avast, avira etc. if you install more than one of them, yes it IS bad. but they were meant to be alone. threat fire isn't. it needs to be with a "main app" like avast for example.

[Kenny94]

http://forums.techguy.org/general-se...ll-what-2.html

Post 17

[Kenny94]

avira is best for on demand scanning, avast is best for real time protection.

Also, explain this. Should I install Avira AntiVir AND avast! Antivirus.... Then use AntiVir for "Demand Scanning" then use Avast for On-Access/real time protection?

[atnskyline]

you can have both installed and disable the real time for avira. i had comodo, threatfire, avast and avg on my pc all with rea time on and no slow down nothing. i have 3gb ram and a 2.8GHZ dual core. many people have same as me. so they should be able to run them as well. but now i have comodo with real time off. threatfire and avast on.
also when you said you agree to that post you are agreeing with threat fire and that multi layer defenses are better. they are. stuff like prevx and threatfire are different they use not much recources and don't interfere because they se differnet ways to use the real time. it only uses 3,992k of physical memory and 0 cpu, when scanning with threat fire it uses 6 CPU. not much at all.

check out this site http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/...known-threats/
it has more info about it and more in depth. and pics of the mem usage.

[Gizzy]

I would like to add that you can run into more problems than just slow downs from running two similar programs in real-time,

just for example in the past (I believe it's fixed now) running threatfire along with comodo's defense+ (they're both some what similar) caused I think it was defense+'s keylogger protection to fail,

so by running similar programs in real-time there could be underlying conflicts going on that you don't realize unless you test the programs with poc's/malware/etc that was how the conflict between comodo and threatfire was found,

even if not in real-time there could be conflicts from the way the programs hook into your computer since security programs have to hook in tight so that they can't be defeated by malware.

[Kenny94]

Originally Posted by atnskyline

you can have both installed and disable the real time for avira. i had comodo, threatfire, avast and avg on my pc all with rea time on and no slow down nothing. i have 3gb ram and a 2.8GHZ dual core. many people have same as me. so they should be able to run them as well. but now i have comodo with real time off. threatfire and avast on.
also when you said you agree to that post you are agreeing with threat fire and that multi layer defenses are better. they are. stuff like prevx and threatfire are different they use not much recources and don't interfere because they se differnet ways to use the real time. it only uses 3,992k of physical memory and 0 cpu, when scanning with threat fire it uses 6 CPU. not much at all.

check out this site http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/...known-threats/
it has more info about it and more in depth. and pics of the mem usage.

Read the post again:

The only good defense is a multi-layered defense! Ideally, every computer should have one anti-virus program with up-to-date definitions, a two-way firewall, at least one anti-malware program that offers real-time protection without installing a second anti-virus "engine", and a program that monitors for possible unwanted changes to the registry and startups.

While ThreatFire does say that it is compatible with other AV programs, I prefer to err on the side of caution. Especially since there are so many other good options available, many of them free.

http://www.helpwithpcs.com/tech-supp...pic.php?t=2994