I used Norton (corporate without the bloatware) for a long time until they were very slow to come out with a 64bit version many years ago. I have since been using Avira, which has some of the best overall scores in testing. I always see AVG mentioned a lot as the best free AV, but I don't think it's even close to the best, just the most popular. But my opinion on AVG is not from personal experience with it, just what I've seen from testing sources over the years.

I've tried BitDefender a year ago and it worked well I think, but too many annoyances drove me from it and it didn't perform well on older hardware.

Lately, recent articles have been calling webroot the best out there.

On a side note, Comodo Firewall is nice.

AVAST offers 1 year free to people who register the first time so thats a very good offer before you have to buy it.

Nobody has mentioned ClamWIN/ClamAV - open source (free) AV for both Windows and Linux. I have found it generally effective on both systems, and the price is right! For Windows, MS Security Essentials is a reasonable choice, but it only works for MS systems.

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Hi Guys, My advice is to use a program that you are comfortable with and giving you the best possible antivirus protection, so go ahead and try out the 30 or 60 day trial versions of the products out on the market and satisfy oneself with what suits you the best. Cheers and hope this helps.

There are a ton of free antivirus software. But in my opion, AVG AntiVirus is the best.

I used Avast and Panda cloud antivirus.

during installation of windows 7 it is not detecting hard drive

I think Avast is great although my dad doesnt like it i think Avast did a lot for me in the past I think it has a tight competition against Bitdefender 2015 along with malwarebytes. Malwarebytes is a very good program and has a good detection rate so does Avast 2015 which only been released a few months back. Norton is not as good as malwarebytes sometimes i get confused if a threats been detected Norton overall is not so great of an antivirus but still Malwarebytes is my most favourite overall.

AVG just a waste of time it installs all those annoying toolbars

windows defender ... I don't even know it exist haha

Still exists

Ed_E , or your systems are compromised by effective malware - the idea of most viruses is not to make themselves and their activities detectable
The horror if I am correct is that all security suites are compromisable by design because they must have exclusions for user ( and therefor seemingly user) installed commercial spyware and nannyware - what would be the point a company or parent installing a user monitoring keylogger if security removes it ?

Im running AVG at the moment just to see what it can do but i think MBAM Bitdefender Avast are great

Know that any Antivirus Suite aint perfect!

There is no such thing as a truly free antivirus. You're always going to “pay” with something. Most antivirus companies limit the free version of their software to only offer basic protection. This leaves a lot of holes in your computer's cybersecurity defense. The antivirus company hopes you'll recognize you're not well-protected, and they'll try to get you to upgrade to the paid plan by sending you a ton of notifications and advertisements.

Some other antivirus companies even sell free users' data to large corporations for marketing purposes — the popular free antivirus Avast (who also owns AVG) was just accused of doing this exact thing.

I've been using only the Microsoft Defender software for years on a dozen or so computers and not one virus yet.

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