Fastest free antivirus

[ratdude747]

grr...

anyway, I decided to dig out my old dell d400 and upon booting xp, i discover it is running like crap. especially when startign up and executing programs.

It uses avast free antivirus... and i read that starting progrmas is often where it slows down computers the most.

I formerly used comodo until it began pissing me off due to it autoblocking thins like network file sharing and the like...

the questiuon is is there any good, free antivirus out there that is faster than avast?


This is not a "use common sense and ditch the AV" thread... that is not the answer i am looking for. also, due to it using intel i865gm graphics, linux is out. I also doubt this would make a good hackintosh, since it has programs on it i no longer have the disc to (they are also windows only).

[mariushm]

Re: Fastest free antivirus

Sorry to not be much help... the only free antivirus I used was AVG : http://free.avg.com/ww-en/homepage

I don't know how it's now but back when I used it, it wasn't particularly fast and it was starting to become bloated with banners and craps.

Being from East Europe where most people pirate software, I tried most of the programs and what I loved using was F-Secure Antivirus (which was fast, very good but quite expensive to buy) and Eset NOD32.

In fact, Eset NOD32 is so fast and has good to very good detection rate that I bought it now that I have a job (sort of, freelancer working for same company for years). 15-20 euro a year really doesn't seem so much if it's the main computer.

Oh.. and I also chose NOD32 because the regular version also installs on server operating systems - before I bought a legal version of Windows 7 I used to run Windows 2003 Standard (stable as hell and great OS). F-Secure Antivirus was about 40-60$ for regular users and about 500$ for a workstation/server version.

I've heard good things about Avira Antivirus as well - might want to try that.

Here's a recent picture of a comparative test :



The ones on the far right are the best... The more they are to the right means they're good at detecting/cleaning viruses they already have signatures and patters in the database, the more to the top they're best at detecting viruses/hacks/malicious web scripts/whatever they don't yet have signatures for.

[lti]

Re: Fastest free antivirus

Microsoft Security Essentials is the slowest antivirus program I have ever used. When I tried to open a folder, the computer would completely freeze for a few minutes while MSE scanned every file in the folder. I lived with it until I found out that it was removing entries from my custom Hosts file. Every site I added to the Hosts file was known to infect computers, so MSE was actually making my computer less secure.

The only problem I have had with Avast is that its official download link takes me to Download.com, which bundles every download with a shitload of malware. It runs well on a computer with a really lame processor and a hard drive that is so slow that you would think it is running in PIO mode.

[mockingbird]

Re: Fastest free antivirus

The fastest free antivirus is Avast 4.8.

[shovenose]

Re: Fastest free antivirus

Comodo is pretty fast They just updated the interface so probably some back-end improvements as well, you might want to try it as such.

[ratdude747]

Re: Fastest free antivirus

Comodo is pretty fast They just updated the interface so probably some back-end improvements as well, you might want to try it as such.

it seemed too paranoid. also caused a lot of drag and was a pita to deal with. have any 3rd party reviews to cite?

[mockingbird]

Re: Fastest free antivirus

You can eliminate the "paranoia" with Comodo by disabling the "Sandbox".

[c_hegge]

Re: Fastest free antivirus

of all the fre AVs I've used, I find security essentials to be the least bloated.

[ratdude747]

Re: Fastest free antivirus

You can eliminate the "paranoia" with Comodo by disabling the "Sandbox".

still doesn't fix the bloat or the random blocking of network services.

edit- trying MSE now.

[mockingbird]

Re: Fastest free antivirus

MSE -
I have seen this bring a computer to a standstill when it hung trying to determine if a large several gigabyte install file was safe or not... This was the latest version on Windows 7 64.

I also use it in my old 939 dual core Athlon, it doesn't seem to slow it down too much, but I would never use MSE with my main rig...

Like I said... for old legacy XP builds, use Avast 4.8. It works quite well and does not tax the system... the newer Avast is trash.

[shovenose]

Re: Fastest free antivirus

MSE is not recommended for Windows 7. For XP it's great though.
On Windows 7, it's just too damn slow. I don't know why.

[joshnz]

Re: Fastest free antivirus

security essentials for me but I probably could run any bloatware on this rig.
one of my friend's use Gdata it makes his Athlon 2700 system crawl and uses a great chunk of his ram.

[shovenose]

Re: Fastest free antivirus

it seemed too paranoid. also caused a lot of drag and was a pita to deal with. have any 3rd party reviews to cite?

Here is a review from PCWorld, which seems to agree with me that it's a good product:
http://www.pcworld.com/product/73054...remium_50.html

Note that the above are for the version they just updated. The new interface is slightly different and it's an improved product.

[lti]

Re: Fastest free antivirus

MSE -
I have seen this bring a computer to a standstill when it hung trying to determine if a large several gigabyte install file was safe or not... This was the latest version on Windows 7 64.

That was the same problem I had with it on Windows XP. Since my computer is slower than yours, the computer would freeze when scanning multiple small files.

MSE is not recommended for Windows 7. For XP it's great though.
On Windows 7, it's just too damn slow. I don't know why.

It is too slow on any version of Windows.

[gerg]

Re: Fastest free antivirus

i prefer avast and have been using it for years and it works great

[Rulycat]

Re: Fastest free antivirus

Avast seems to run well. AVG causes problems with Crysis.

[Sparky]

Re: Fastest free antivirus

AVG is crap these days. It was causing trouble with webpages loading properly, not just for me but a number of other people.

I have Avast on my home PC and MSE on my work PC. Both seem OK so far, but I don't really get viruses so I can't say how effective either of them is

[toastygoodness]

Re: Fastest free antivirus

i'm confused on why MSE acts that way on your guys' computers... it's the fastest on mine. are you sure your guys' computers are clean?

[lti]

Re: Fastest free antivirus

My computer was clean.

The Hosts file modification was strange. It never told me that the Hosts file was hijacked, but it removed some entries. The file contained blank lines where the entries used to exist. When I tried to restore the file from my backup, it detected the backup as a Hosts file hijack and removed the entire contents of the file (the Hosts file was still on the backup drive, but it was a zero byte file).

[Uranium-235]

Re: Fastest free antivirus

I've put MSE on HUNDREDS of computer and on lesser ones it does suck, but in the latest weeks its been getting better, better detection and performance