Whats the best free antivirus?

[oicaameeroonx]

title says it all guys!

[dcgregg]

title says it all guys!

I use and recommend Avast Antivirus and find it great, I also have it on my android with anti theft features. It gives real time protection and has a wealth of features such as automatically updating your programmes if you want it too also.
http://www.avast.com/en-gb/index

There are others but I prefer Avast for my needs

[jonesi100]

I always used AVG Free, but when I checked recently it had started to charge. Obviously its a decent product which they can now sell!

[wasabi]

MS Security Essentials if you don't need fancy whizzy CPU-cycle hogging special features. Non invasive, non-CPU hogging, easy to use, install and forget pretty much.

[Jellyfish]

I'm jumping ahead to win 8 pretty soon (still on xp!) What i use atm is Anti Vir, a few pop ups (to buy etc..) when it updates but i do like it. I heard about nod32 or a couple of others, not too sure if its free. I also use malwarebytes, spybot&ccleaner (oh and zonealarm). I might give the ms security a go when i can, heard not bad things about it, but not sure

[Zak33]

two layers, both free

MS Security Essentials

and once per month, run Housecall , which runs free with no install with up to date lists the moment you run it

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/uk/

and for a third convenience, when downloading a file you dont trust.. save to your PC, then upload to this site to check it before opening.
https://www.virustotal.com/

the thing about these free ones is that lots of IT people use them, giving these companies first crack at fixing the main viruses and you don't have to pressume your PC has the latest lists of evil stuff... cos you go there and check it.

Big antivirus companies have to send out MILLIONS of virus pacakges to their users.. it's always out of date. so you might as well go to them!

Eset also have a nice free online scanner.

[Jellyfish]

Thats pretty cool Zak, i'll have to look into that! I hadn't heard of those at all before. I had to edit part of my post as even i didn't understand a part of it... ooops

[azrael-]

I always used AVG Free, but when I checked recently it had started to charge. Obviously its a decent product which they can now sell!

Isn't it still free?

I'm jumping ahead to win 8 pretty soon (still on xp!) What i use atm is Anti Vir, a few pop ups (to buy etc..) when it updates but i do like it. I heard about nod32 or a couple of others, not too sure if its free. I also use malwarebytes, spybot&ccleaner (oh and zonealarm). I might give the ms security a go when i can, heard not bad things about it, but not sure

ESET NOD32 Antivirus isn't free, but I find it's worth its price. A great free tool to have is Spyware Blaster. Especially for its blacklist of unsafe sites.

[deejayburnout]

I used to use And Free however it seems to be getting a hog so moved to avast and I do like it. I run it to on my Android and it's also good on that.

Highly recommended

[Woodentop]

MS Security Essentials is good but use a paid one (NOD32).

[Ttaskmaster]

There was some discussion going on around free vs paid, in that if there's a free version and paid version of a particular AV, the free one will be notably crap compared to the one for which they want paying.
On that basis, I went with MS Security Essentials - It's free, there isn't a paid version and it's in MS's interests to help safeguard their users.

Occasionally little things get through (I won't detail the sort of sites I occasionally visit, but I will just say I am only human ), so I still use things like CCCleaner and Malwarebytes, though!

[MaverickWill]

I tend to stick with Avast or Avira, depending on spec. Avira holds on to a little more RAM than Avast, but not tons. Anything over 2GB gets Avira.

[ma9mwah2]

another vote for MS Security Essential. never had any issues with it.

[oldboy47]

+1 for MS Security Essentials plus regular scans with Malwarebytes

[NokkonWud]

You can't go wrong with either Avast or AVG. My personal preference is Avast though, always had good experiences with it.

[jossi007]

What version of Windows are you running?
MS Security Essentials is very good, but if you are running Windows XP, beware that the support will stop in a month time.