Hello,

Here are several additional free anti-virus programs of which I am aware:

ClamAV - clamav.net (no realtime protection, see WinPooch)
Microworld Free Antivirus Toolkit - mwti.net/products/mwav/mwav.asp
PC Tools Antivirus Free Edition - pctools.com/free-antivirus/
WinPooch - http://sourceforge.net/projects/winpooch/ (realtime protection, see ClamAV)

One may also be able to get evaluation copies of commercial anti-virus software products from vendors as well as free copies for participating in beta test cycles.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Thanks Aryeh for adding to the list.

It jogged my memory.

Let’s add the Free Spyware Doctor 5.5 from Google as well that also has anti-virus.

I used to use AVG until 7.5 then moved to Avast! because the licensing cost for the school I provide computer support for was much better and included central management. I “sampled” the free version at home to become familiar with it and my machine is faster in nearly all tasks.

I have never switched back.

Kevin

Hi Kevin,
Many swear by Avast. Thanks for he comments.

My dad and my brother’s computers got a downloader trojan/proxy virus within the last year, both were running avast, in both cases avast did NOTHING. I thought Avast was good too, but now I don’t!

Also the old video about goggle.com giving people viruses featured a computer in a VMware virtual machine running windows fully patched and Avast latest version and within 5 minutes the system was bluescreened and dead. Not sure if that vid is still around or if goggle.com still gives the virus but ’nuff said.

Only ever once had a virus get thru AVG, and it was a really really vicious one back when AVG was in 6.0, it was an .exe eating virus, and AVG eventually blocked me from logging in because winlogon.exe was infected. Had to reformat 4 times before I realized the virus was infecting my .exe’s i was installing firewall/antivirus from, and that i had to wipe em!

I recently did some research on the effectiveness on anti viruses for the company i work for, and Avira is up at the top with Kaspersky and some GWT or something named like that which I forget what its called, as far as detection goes (like over 99%, out of a test of thousands of virii dumped in).

AVG and Avast have progressed leaps and bounds over the last 12 months alone in terms of what they can now detect and remove apparently according to the data, but that was of course using their professional versions, no clue how well their free versions compare.

The site that did the tests and had all the charts etc was av-comparatives.org, if you wanna look at it, pretty cool.

Thanks for the info and link.