good free antivirus

[Guest]

I'm looking for an antivirus that's free without using a torrent. I was using Microsoft security essentials, but I kept getting an error with the OOBE file in my event viewer. I believe that was causing my pc to crash. I'm still not sure. A solution on microsoft's website said to delete the file and restart, but I still got errors. I have completely uninstalled and removed the related folder. Hopefully I don't get any freezes now. Does anybody know a good free program I could replace mse with?

 

[Deleted member 217926]

Avira and Avast are both generally as good as paid solutions. AVG is very good as well. MCSE ( Microsoft ) was pretty good at first but I don't trust it anymore after the latest antivirus testing. It did quite poorly.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Avira and Avast are both generally as good as paid solutions. AVG is very good as well. MCSE ( Microsoft ) was pretty good at first but I don't trust it anymore after the latest antivirus testing. It did quite poorly.

And I don't trust most of those AV tests as they tend to give Norton and Trend Micro good ratings when I have seen both of those let through very basic viruses that MSE catches.

The thing is that MSE utilizes the older but more efficient definition style while a lot of others like to use heuristics, which means they will try to predict a virus based on virus behavior and thus can get a lot of false positives since a lot of the newer viruses act like normal programs.

MSE trends to never get false positives.

I have been using MSE since its release and never gotten a virus. But even with the best AV in the world, you still need half a brain to be completely safe.

 

[davcon]

I agree with jimmysmitty MSE hasn't let me down since day one.
I'm not what you would consider a safe surfer either.
It's lightweight and doesn't constantly spawn pop-ups.

 

[boobloo]

I use the avast free anti virus on both my systems and have not had any problems using either of these. I also use Malwarebytes (free version) on both systems. Malwarebytes only scans system when asked to do so hence no conflicts with avast.

If u can pay i would suggest you buying the paid version of any one these two. Otherwise the free versions work pretty well too.

 

[GFXOLAV]

I will recomend MalwareBytes free. Helped me remove 96 % of used ram

 

[GFXOLAV]

I agree with jimmysmitty MSE hasn't let me down since day one.
I'm not what you would consider a safe surfer either.
It's lightweight and doesn't constantly spawn pop-ups.

MSE uses a lot of your computer's resoures

 

[Tradesman1]

I like the free version of AVG and it's a good idea to keep a copy of the free version of MalwareBytes also as alot of malware isn't detected by Virus scanners

 

[sedona]

Try the Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition (2014), which is easy to use with no options to configure. It consumes very little resource (gzserv.exe and gziface.exe) and doesn't push annoying advertisement for their paid version. I use Malwarebytes Pro but the free edition is good enough for occasional on-demand scans. I normally don't run the real-time protection with Pro version as it uses quite a bit of memory.

 

[jimmysmitty]

I agree with jimmysmitty MSE hasn't let me down since day one.
I'm not what you would consider a safe surfer either.
It's lightweight and doesn't constantly spawn pop-ups.

MSE uses a lot of your computer's resoures

That is in no way true. I have been using it and it at most used 200MB even when scanning.