[Heccubus]

My Norton Antivirus license is going to expire soon. Very soon. Since it has become a tremendous pain (ie: automatically updating when I tell it not to, turning off Auto-Protect for no reason, etc) I have no interest in renewing the subscription service. However, funds prevent me from purchasing a new antivirus set up. Does anyone know of any good free or open-source antivirus solutions? I don't want my baby to be exposed to the nasty bugs when Norton leaves us in a couple of weeks.

[Chefelf]

I dunno. Ever since AVG stopped their free version I've been at a loss for recommendations.

You could do what I do and not even have an anti virust program installed. (shhh. Don't tell the hackers!)

[Chefelf]

Check out sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net

Search for "anti virus" and there's quite a few interesting things that come up.

[Heccubus]

That was where I was headed if nothing turned up here! Sourceforge has gotten me out of many a jam.

[rock_dash]

Wait, AVG stopped making thier free Anti-Virus?! Son of...!

Grah, well, it's not free, but Panda's not bad. It's only $30, and it updates daily instead of weekly. The only problem I had with it is that when I had to reinstall windows because I replaced my HD, thier website wouldn't let me reactivate my account. But you could probably call thier Tech Support to get that fixed, I just never had the chance.

[mrRobinson]

I actually can recommend Avast! antivirus. I've been using it since I switched away from Norton and then AVG and actually like it better than both of them. If you need to go with a source forge one then I'd say go with clamwin.

[Heccubus]

Clamwin was one that I was looking at, actually.

[Chefelf]

I actually can recommend Avast! antivirus.  I've been using it since I switched away from Norton and then AVG and actually like it better than both of them.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I bow to mrRobinson's experience on the matter. I will check it out if I ever wise up and decide to reinstall an anti-virus.

[Heccubus]

I'm going to give Avast! a try. Thanks for the suggestion, mrRobinson!

[mrRobinson]

No problem. You just have to "register" it once installed so it won't stop working after 30 days. Just put in fake info except real email if you want. Same key you get can be used on multiple computer and then you are set. The only other changes I make to it is stopping it from inserting a clean signature in outgoing emails and shutting off its splash screen when I launch outlook.
There have been 3 computers now that were running norton corp 9.0 and I ran a boot time scan of virus' with Avast and it removed a bunch norton couldn't. I've still ran across a bit of trojans, etc. that no virus scanner could remove but those were typically masquerading as BHO's living inside IE. So if you use firefox or Opera you'll be fine.

Edit: oh, although the VRDB is a great feature if you have a Winxp system with system restore enabled just save yourself the resources and disable it. It seemed to always be indexing my files and I have a really fast computer so for the one time I might ever need it I don't think its worth the hdd wear...

This post has been edited by mrRobinson: 04 May 2005 - 01:10 PM

[Slade]

AVG is still free, it's just their horrid site layout makes it a bitch to find.

Just one moment... Have to find it...

BAM! You're welcome.

[Heccubus]

I'm already using Avast! and it's already cleared off a bunch of stuff that Norton seems to have been neglecting for months now.

[SimeSublime]

AVG is still free, it's just their horrid site layout makes it a bitch to find.

Just one moment... Have to find it...

BAM! You're welcome.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I was going to say. I'm still using free AVG.