Recommend a Free Antivirus Program

[DC Al Fine]

I wiped my hard drive last year. When I restarted everything, I chose Avira as my antivirus program. It's doing the job ok, but it's turned into really annoying adware. It keeps making a popup in the bottom right corner of my screen advertising the pay version. The last straw was yesterday when I clicked on a link on wikipedia and it brought me to an Avira ad explaining how they can protect you from links taking you to bad websites. I couldn't access any pages besides that stupid ad for about 5 minutes.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a free anti-virus program? Something effective that won't adware the crap out of me would be nice.

[Donerail]

Sophos has a solid lineup of programs. I haven't used Avast but it has a good reputation as well.

[© tweed]

if you're on Windows, Microsoft makes a "Security Essentials" pack/program that worked fine for me in Vista and Windows 7.  my main problem with Antivirus programs is how they sap memory and performance.  just be careful with .exe's and bundled downloads and you should be ok

[dead0man]

Indeed Security Essentials is a fine antivirus program.  I've used AVG for years and some of the PCs in the house still have it, but for the most part I'm using Security Essentials now.

[Fed. Pac. Chairman Devin]

Geek squad can install this program called webroot for you.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

After having 82 viruses removed from my computer (and for the last time, it was not from porn) I had Avast installed on my system. It works pretty good, and the adware, while fairly frequent, isn't a hastle.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

AVG is pretty good but gigantic and certain versions can sap memory. I remember the 2011 version used to make it so that it was 30 minutes after bootup before you could do anything on the machine. That hasn't happened like that in a long time though.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

I don't think I actually have any software that actively protects my computer. I mean, I can tell when I've got a bad virus... If I've got one, I usually just run Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware and it cleans things up.

[Adam Griffin]

Whatever happened to personal responsibility?

I'd recommend AVG on balance, but it can be frustrating at times. For instance, some websites will be identified as using "black hat techniques" (which means that they are trying to game search engines to rank them higher) and will not load them. In that case, you have to disable it to view these sites. It is a bit of a resource hog, as Yankee said, but a lot of anti-virus programs can be a pain in that area.

[MaxQue]

I wiped my hard drive last year. When I restarted everything, I chose Avira as my antivirus program. It's doing the job ok, but it's turned into really annoying adware. It keeps making a popup in the bottom right corner of my screen advertising the pay version. The last straw was yesterday when I clicked on a link on wikipedia and it brought me to an Avira ad explaining how they can protect you from links taking you to bad websites. I couldn't access any pages besides that stupid ad for about 5 minutes.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a free anti-virus program? Something effective that won't adware the crap out of me would be nice.

You can delete the pop-up by clicking on the X instead of clicking on "close".

[PPT Spiral]

I use a combination of Avast! and MalwareBytes to scrub my computer of filth. Hasn't failed me for the last four years I've been using them.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Frankly I have surrendered on the Anti-Virus front, at least in terms of my main program AVG. The reason for that is size on my slow connection (the restored backup image, I used in November when I finally conquered the 2013 Computer hell I had been in, had AVG 2012 and attempts at upgrade late last year failed), and compatability issues (AVG loves to grind away for hours only to flag such an error and fail).

I usually do monthly upgrades and scans of Malwarebytes and Super Anti-Spyware as a supplement and lately as a substitute, but the latter gets into a funk where it won't update and is a hassle to break loose again.

I did manage to upgrade Zonelarm to the latest version only to have a new one come out just days later back in December. That keeps flagging runtime errors on installation as well.

[© tweed]

Geek squad can install this program called webroot for you.

I can't imagine that not being a ridiculous ripoff

[eric3446]

AVG Free is a good way to go.