Anyone know a good free antivirus software?

malcolm

I tried the demo of macaffe it was horrible, caused mouse lag all over the place. I'm running win xp and looking for a free or cheap antivirus solution any suggestions?

Rob Galanakis

Avast! and Avira are what I have been using for the past few years. I switched to Avira recently and like it better.

glib

Heh, I switched from AVG to Avast and like it better.

Maybe I'll give avira a try.

Jason Young

Avast! has worked well for me.

leilei

I use ClamAV for Windows, as well as Linux

Ben Apuna

+1 for Avast!.

renderhjs

avira is free for non use in private places (e.g at home)- I use it for more than 5 years and its good enough while not slowing down the system.

kodde

Cool... while we are on the subject, free software firewall? Neither Avira or Avast seems to have firewall. Not sure about Avast, seems to have lots of "shield" features, etc. Thanks.

Ben Apuna

Well for firewalls there's Zone Alarm, Comodo, and Online Armor. Comodo is pretty top notch but can sometimes get intrusive with Defense+ enabled. If you are also looking for some free malware scanners two that I use are MalwareBytes and Super AntiSpyware. The free versions don't offer any real time protection for that you can use Spyware Blaster. If you want to surf the internet with even more piece of mind check out Sandboxie.

SyncViewS

I'm running a 64 bit os, and got no problems with AVG free antivirus, which was one of the very first to support x64 (now Avast! does it too). I remember on a 32 bit system Avast! gave me many false positive, but was about two years ago...
I've been using AVG for more than two years without any problem or virus infection of course. Added more recently Comodo free firewall, another of the few supporting x64, works fine once set.

glib

Just checking back in to say this thread convinced me to switch from Avast to Avira, but after a few days of annoying nag windows it tossed up, plus it found a false-positive on one file in my 3dsmax directory that avast and spybot both say isn't a trojan, means I'm back to avast now.

A.Kincade

Karpersky anit virus

or

spybot

AK

robioto

ESET Smart Security... constantly updated, low on system resources, I haven't had any problems while using it.