Hi all,

Just wondering what is the best free downloadable anti-virus there is.

I'm expecting my laptop to come back within the next week once it gets a new hard drive and I can't to hand at the moment find my norton anti virus protection.

I have heard there is free downloadable anti-virus systems but not sure which is the best and what people currently use and can recommend.

Hope you can help.

I use AVG, seems to get decent reviews.

Plus SuperAntiSpyware, seems good also for spyware protection/removal.

I use AVG 8.0 here too, never had any bother with it.

AVG thats the one I had heard about but could not remember the name of it.

I've used AVG for years with only a few minor glitches, but the latest version is extremely bloaty if that sort of thing concerns you. I know quite a few people who swear by Avast, but I haven't tried it.

Another AVG user here, I have also installed Avast on my sons but he changed it to AVG as he prefers the user interface of AVG.

Not had any problems so far (crosses fingers now )

I know quite a few people who swear by Avast, but I haven't tried it.

I use Avast as recommended by someone here but I can't say I've got a technical informed opinion on it.

Thanks for that, all I need it is to protect the pc as I spend a lot of time on banking websites and checking my e-mails and of course brisky

I really like AVG and have never had problems with it, but again it's never actually flagged a virus up to me. I think this could be because I work in the Web Design & Dev. industry and know a dodgy site/e-mail when I see one - I certainly hope this is the case!

Thanks for that, all I need it is to protect the pc as I spend a lot of time on banking websites and checking my e-mails and of course brisky

Either should do the job I think, Thats mainly what I use it for,

(+ whatever my son goes on:rolleyes:)

just a question of which you feel more comfortable with.

Additionally, if you want to protect yourself as fully as possible when using banking web sites, I'd advise that you use a different browser to what you use day-to-day. If you use Internet Explorer generally, download Firefox and access your Internet Banking using that browser. If you use Firefox arleady, download something like google chrome and use it's "Incognito" feature to access your Internet Banking.

This means if you have any tracking cookies or malicious code installed on your computer when browsing day-to-day, that isn't picked up by your anti-virus or anti-spyware software, the software that you do use to access your Internet Banking is unaffected and as secure as possible.

Thats brillant, currently using firefox at present due to my internet provider not working using Internet Explorer.

Firefox is better anyway

I meant to say, i also use Zonealarm as a firewall along side AVG.

I use AVG too although I did have issues with it on one PC and I had to reinstall it but I am rubbish at IT things so I guess I'm saying it's great for people with few ICT skills

I use AVG 8 Free, ZoneAlarm Free, with Lavasoft Ad-Aware and Spybot S&D realtime scanning and mass scanning twice a week

I've moved away from zonealarm recently because it seems to have slipped in quality over the past couple of years, and the XP DNS update that broke it was the final straw. I'm now running Comodo which has an absolutely stunning feature set, but isn't for the faint hearted It's also intelligent enough not to need babysitting through establishing a secure Xbox360 connection.

If you have Barclays online banking then you can get Kaspersky Internet Security free:

http://briskoda.net/tech-shed/free-kaspersky-internet-security-barclays-online-bankers/126874/

I use ccleaner and lavasoft ad-aware too.

Avg

Hi all,

Had a quick gander on AVG's website but as far as I could make out I had to pay to download the software, am I going wrong somewhere??

Typed AVG into google and it said download free but when I clicked on it asked me for my e-mail addy, name and the next step asked for payment :eek:

Davy

down loaded mine from the "computer active" website....totally free

www.computeractive.co.uk go to downloads section

Phil

Thanks will give it a try the now.

Davy

Funnily enough I'm downloading it at the moment as the current installation is complaining of a a corrupt file

The official link is here:

AVG Free - Download installation files & documentation

They've been making it harder to find for years Beware of some sites carrying compromised versions of the software under similar domain names. Computeractive should be fine.

I use Avast. I rate it slightly higher than AVG, but there's not much in it.