Need A/V Software

[Mycroft Holmes]

Interesting, I only know people that swear at McAfee, me included, we have the enterprise stuff at work and it is REALLY irritating to see a processor taken up by the AV.

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH

[Clumpco]

I tried BitDefender (on a friend's laptop that they had just bought). It really slowed it down during start-up. I generally recommend Kaspersky for neophyte friends, they have a good 3-license deal for multi-computer homes. I suffered from Sophos at work and would not let it anywhere near one of my own computers. I suspect that it is mainly popular due to an excellent central management interface. Personally I still use the Symantec Endpoint Protection client in stand-alone mode (do not confuse with Norton AV) - I don't use the network protection/firewall that it has and it is entirely unobtrusive, even on older, slower machines. And did I mention that I don't like Sophos?

[Amarnath S]

Exactly. It is the IT guys who swear by McAfee :-)

[Nelek]

I use it as well and I am quite happy with the results and the performance

M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.

[obermd]

MSSE & Windows Defender should have the worst protection in the industry. They're free, making any paid product that does worse than the MS free products a short lived product. Personally I have had MSSE and Windows Defender catch stuff that paid products have missed.

[Kirk 10389821]

Agreed, I switched to eset and now have a 10pc license for it. I have it on all the machines I have. Very efficient (unlike others, slowing my machine down). I have exactly ONE complaint. - If I try to exclude scanning *.XXX files, it applies it at the time for known drives only. So if I connect to a VPN (I do all the time), it scans *.XXX files over the VPN, which is slow. I don't want to turn off network scanning, but I get forced to if I have a slow VPN. One complaint, like that, after years of usage.

[Marc Greiner at home]

I use MSSE, whatever the testing labs tell. Other antiviruses that I tried reported several false positives. Additionally they bragged about *viruses* that they thought they had found in the spam or in deleted emails.

[Bruce Patin]

I use Kapersky. It found two rootkits on my son's computer and one on my wife's computer that Malwarebytes had not found. It will detect NSA viruses. For the most part, it does not interfere. There is sometimes a bit of a slow down when it scans while the computer is being used. I set it to not do that when games are being played. Unfortunately, not all apps are games. There is another setting to not scan when the power cord is unplugged, so I set that on, and, when the computer slows, temporarily pull the power cord to stop the scan. Kind of a kluge. Others I have tried are Malwarebytes, BitDefender, Symantec, Norton, Sophos. Malwarebytes is good, but Kaspersky is better. BitDefender started putting emails in the junk folder without asking and sometimes caused performance problems. Symantec is used at work, but has caused enough lockouts and slowdowns that I won't use it on my own computers, besides not being as good at detection as Kaspersky. Norton was only used temporarily once because it came with the computer, but it is like Symantec, only is pushy enough that I think it is more like a virus itself. I have tried Sophos temporarily and liked it, but just decided on Kaspersky because of its detection of the NSA virus.

[E153N]

Personally, I use Avast, you get a free and a paid-for licence. Currently I use the free one (and have done so for the past 7 years or so) and have yet to find fault with it. Switching it to "gaming mode" turns off any notifications/sounds that would popup. It hasn't failed me yet. Whenever I suspected something wrong I downloaded the Kaspersky One-time scan, ran that in safe mode, so far it hasn't come up with anything either. (That said, I make a habit of formatting my PC at least every 2 years, so that might squish any of the sneakier buggers) I've had exposure to McAfee and NOD32 as well. McAfee seemingly super-effective finding magical threats to remove at least twice a day, but I kick it out as soon as the trial expires and haven't ever had issues since (went through that on 2 machines). NOD32 is what my workplace uses, and it has yet to disappoint, the only complaint I might have would be the discreet definition update notifications, which I sometimes mistake for an email notification. (Which is, to be honest, a silly complaint and can be easily ignored) Whether or not AVs are still a thing? Depends on the user. I'm too lazy to make sure my PC is airtight manually, so I get someone else's software to do it. Though I generally distrust anything paid-for, because those tend to have the most motivation to make viruses to begin with.

[peterkmx]

On Windows 10 I use Windows Defender for real-time protection and MBAM for custom full scans each weekend. MBAM scans are slow, but very "accurate", even changed extensions like changed .doc to .bmp are flagged out as suspicious. I started using MBAM 2-3 years ago on Windows 7 because of its good reviews (seemed to be the best in detections, but can have "false positives" too :-)...), Cheers,