Antispy/antivirus program?

[John]

Does anyone know of any antispy/antivirus programs which are actually free?
Everything I'm finding which says it's free actually ends up wanting to charge --- after they have me download their file  ...

[dalebert]

I was looking into the same thing lately and came upon this page on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_antivirus_software

AVG was recommended to me once back when it was all free. Now they have a free version and a pay version. Have you tried it yet? What about Avast?

[dalebert]

On first glance, Avast! is sounding pretty good to me. Apparently it's 60 days without a catch, but then you have to register it but it's still free. After 14 more months, it must be re-registered, presumably remaining free.

http://www.avast.com/

[K. Darien Freeheart]

AVG Free is indeed free, no catches for a home user. There is an ad at the bottom of the control panel, selling the extra features of the premium version.

Avast! is kind of annoying, in my experience. If it can't pass the date check, it disables, leaving you with no anti-virus. Not a good situation to be in if you're without internet somewhere.

One thing I did LIKE about Avast though, is that after you install it (on XP, I don't know if Vista or 7 do the same thing) it scans your entire hard drive on the next boot, so it can remove anything that it finds BEFORE they run.

[leetninja]

dont use avast!  dont use avg!!

if you want a peice of software please download and install MalwareBytes.  A truly free program that catches 99.99999% of all "virus" malware and spyware infections on your machine.  maybe i will return later with a valid key and serial for you all group license style.

[CJS]

dont use avast!  dont use avg!!

if you want a peice of software please download and install MalwareBytes.  A truly free program that catches 99.99999% of all "virus" malware and spyware infections on your machine.  maybe i will return later with a valid key and serial for you all group license style.

Here is a great place to get free soft ware of all kinds
..download.cnet.com

AVG and AVAST are great .. but MalewareBytes runs a lot cleaner IMO . If you are still running XP  ... make sure you manually download and run The malicious software removal tool every month from windows update.

[castle_ahh]

i use avg it is good in my opinion.

you can also try spybot, its not really anti virus,. but is anti spy ware and such.

[error]

Microsoft Security Essentials.

[K. Darien Freeheart]

Microsoft Security Essentials.

Really? Are you being sarcastic?

If you're being serious, I'll switch drop it on my wife's laptop.

[leetninja]

anything microsoft might as well be its own spyware/malware/virus ...

one of the first things i do when building a windoze box is disable/uninstall/remove windows defender and disable their crap security alerts etc.

[PattyLee loves dogs]

Avira is free (though it does put up an ad for the premium version once in a while.)

Check out the forums at bleepingcomputer.com if you want current advice.

[error]

Microsoft Security Essentials.

Really? Are you being sarcastic?

If you're being serious, I'll switch drop it on my wife's laptop.

Unfortunately, no solution is perfect except for formatting and reinstalling Linux. You know this already. Why are you subjecting your wife to Windows?!?

[leetninja]

malwarebytes:

6BS99
HY7R-VLNR-2AYU-BRY9

[K. Darien Freeheart]

Why are you subjecting your wife to Windows?!?

There's no CUPS profile for our wide-format printer. SANE can't handle our wide-format scanner. Plus, she likes games. She ran Ubuntu for a while and it was pretty good for her, but ultimately she likes Windows better.