Free antivirus programs
 

How reliable are free antivirus programs available on the net? I know you get what you pay for, and in most cases the paid programs are always preferable. I assume the situation where purchasing a paid program is not an option.

For home or small business Windows systems, Microsoft Security Essentials is pretty good. Spybot is a good companion to it.


Ken

The suggestions KenB made are good but I would recommend AVG Free. It has everything that other free Anti-Virus programs have and more. I used it for a few years and recently bought the full version. Compared to other software it's great.

Regards,
ford

Every time I tried to use AVG I found I had trouble with it not clearing some of my cookies. That was with the free version. I've upgraded to the paid version now, and I find it very good. It is also a bit more reasonable for small business owners who may only have 3 or 4 computers to protect. It certainly was cheeper than Norton or McAfee.

You have to be careful with those "free" antivirus programs. Some of them are actually viruses in disguise! I like avast!. It is actually pretty decent for being free.

Among Free Antivirus Programs, Avast antivirus is the best, I have experienced many viruses before using avast, even of such a kind that my system suddenly stopped working and jammed. When I download avast, and make a full boot system scan, it actually deleted all these viruses during boot, that is before windows start. That means it also checked and deleted viruses that secretly attached to windows important files.

Free Antivirus OK
 

I have been using many free antiviruses and never had a problem. The free version of the antivirus is some sort of advertising for the software provider. So they are pretty careful not to let the free users have a bad experience.

I think it's also important to note without those two things, the best paid security suite wouldn't fully protect you either. You have more than enough on-demand scanners as well. :)so i will also tried to download it

I also think that paid antivirus solution can't solve all related problems. Therefore, it's possible to use free software in this case.

I have been using many 100 % free antiviruses and never had a problem. Possible edition of the anti-virus is some kind of marketing for the software company. So they are fairly cautious not to let the 100 % free customers have a bad experience.