Best Antivirus Software?

Discussion in 'Miscellaneous' started by AmusedStew, Mar 5, 2015.

  1. First off- I have Windows 8 (I know 8 sucks but its what I got :))

    I have used McAfee for the longest time but I know there are better ones and I would love to try one out.

    I was thinking of Norton, but what do you guys use?

    If you could provide a link for the software you use, I would love it.

    Thanks.

    I think I am on the forums too much haha : )
    ShelLuser likes this.
  2. An antivirus really isn't enough for full protection, you need anti malware as well. I would recommend Avast & Malwarebytes (both). Have Malwarebytes always active and run an Avast scan every once in a while and you should be good to go.

  3. no.
    WCG_Elite, jkjkjk182 and ScarTheNinja like this.
  4. AmusedStew likes this.
  5. Just use Avast! https://www.avast.com/ - it's antivirus and anti-malware.

    Avast! is Antivirus and anti-malware:

    Under the "Select the right level of protection for your PC" area
  6. Oh cool, haven't seen that.
  7. I use Norton and have done for many years, my son uses AVG and like Dwight has never had any problems.
  8. Me either xD I only just found it too
  9. banana is always the best choice
  10. For free? Avast or AVG + Malwarebytes
    Paid? Kaspersky hands down
    Dwight5273 likes this.
  11. According to my Cousin (Who actually have a diploma in Computer Engineering) said that the best Free antivirus is Avira. I use it and it's good.

    But as I always says, the best antivirus is yourself.
  12. I use webroot, I dont know how good it is in comparison to others but I haven't had any virus problems on this computer yet.
    Bro_im_infinite likes this.
  13. I went with Avast. Glad I dont have to pay any money :)

    (would have paid if had to lol)
    Bro_im_infinite and nfell2009 like this.
  14. People pay for that?:eek: It is almost always rebated to free on Newegg.
  15. Windows 8 comes pre-installed with Microsoft's own antivirus. Its MS Security Essentials, just better and more... pre-installed :p

    However if you don't just want to keep it at that, use Avast!. The only things you really need in it are completely free in the, er, FREE edition.
    Can McAfee really be considered an anti-virus? :p
  16. It's a memory hog XD
    jkjkjk182 likes this.
  17. Avira is one of the best free, but it asks you if you'd like to pay like once a day.

    IT people used to say it's better to have 2-3 viruses than one Norton :D
    (it was much easier to get rid of viruses :))
    but that was like few years ago...

    If you basically know what to do and what not to do on the Internet (much more important than any protection software) then basic anti-virus / anti-malware protection is enough. All that "all-round protection" software packages have high potential for creating more problems than they solve.
  18. just make sure you are only using one anti-virus, one firewall, and one malware scanner. having two working is actually counter intuitive. so go into your windows essentials and disable the stock ones
  19. You can never be too much on the forums. I think it's awesome that you're asking the community for stuff apart from Minecraft. That's what makes a community IMO; going beyond the original topic.

    Most has already been said. In my opinion there is no best, in the end they all have some major problems. I've come into contact with several, mostly during work (software maintenance on customer computers) and well... The following is just my opinion / experience on them.

    Avast

    Used to be my favorite because it didn't provide the bulk and mess with some others had. Then they turned their product into an "internet suite" and things went downhill. Usually the first thing I do when I encounter Avast is to turn off their firewall, turn off the alerts which this gives you and re-instate the Windows firewall. For a few simple reasons...

    Mostly because the firewall used to be a piece of shit. It wasn't capable of correctly tracking a (larger, but still small) amount of parallel connections which would eventually result in Avast stalling / stopping the whole PC. I first encountered this at work; customer complained that our software stalled his PC whenever he tried to update it. Eventually we traced it back to Avast; it didn't cope too well with the software opening up and using 4 - 6 connections in parallel.

    Note: this experience is dated, this incident happened around 2013/2014. So a lot may have changed.

    Norton

    Bit of the same as the above. We've had nothing but bad experiences with it, mostly where the scanner would pick up false alerts and customers sometimes started to call us because stuff stopped working (that's usually what happens if you blindly trust whatever an anti virus program like Norton is telling you).

    The others...

    All the previously mentioned names above are also things which we (my company) would advice customers. You can hardly go wrong with them.

    Personally I prefer Microsoft Security Essentials because it doesn't get in my way too much, combined with SpyBot Search & Destroy (but the older 1.6.2 version which can still use the most recent detection rules, I really dislike the modern version & interface). It doesn't provide full (real-time) protection but is enough for me.

    And just a small weekend vent addition if I may?

    I don't trust anti virus software in general. At all. None of them. Don't get me wrong: its safer to keep one around and check your PC from time to time, but I mistrust some companies for generating a market for themselves.

    Around the 90's a computer virus popped up, almost the first of its kind: Datacrime. Not really the first but it made the phenomena well known. The hysteria went to such heights that the Dutch government even released a free to obtain anti virus product to check your PC's. I still have the 5.25" disk around here somewhere.

    Now; the funny thing is that my main home-server (fully private) is in a case which still has a 5.25" disk. It didn't bother me so I never bothered to replace it (its a tower and such has room for plenty of stuff).

    A few years ago my gf discovered that 5.25" disk I mentioned above, and she started joking about "I wonder how much viruses are on it". So I put it into the computer, and scanned it with a modern virus scanner. Not exactly sure which one I used. However; the result was interesting: according to the software that 5.25" disk contained the Datacrime II virus.

    A disk which was only used once or twice to check 2 home computers (reboot, boot from floppy & check your PC).

    Coincidence? Conspiracies? Or just a bad detection? I dunno, but I still don't trust anti virus software in general :)
    M4nic_M1ner likes this.
  20. Probably just detected the virus "signature" that the original (old, simple) scanner was using. :)