What's the best antivirus for a PC?

[Brandon]

we use malwarebytes and superantispyware to help remove viruses and malware from pc's at work. We also use symantec. I personally run with norton from Comcast (it's free for customers)

I have yet to find one that will find every threat and prevent every threat from getting through. It seems to be many are good at catching most but you usually will run 2 or 3 free ones before you get the issue under control.

 

[Sainte]

I use a TRS80 Model III running LDOS 5.1.4 - never had a virus or trojan problem.

Ahh the the ol Trash 80! Hahaha

 

[Sainte]

Norton is more hype and sales pitch than good anti-virus. It will slow your machine down and gets in to everything, not in a good way. Not to mention at $60+ a year.....

 

[Scutter01]

Remember that Malwarebytes and (name your antivirus) are two different things that serve different purposes.

If you're looking for the "best", don't listen to anecdotal reviews on a gun board. Go find an unbiased review where they've tested several side-by-side against a static test system. Here's one from PCMAG, for example. Frankly, they all suck, but some suck less than others.

 

[Scutter01]

Norton is more hype and sales pitch than good anti-virus. It will slow your machine down and gets in to everything, not in a good way. Not to mention at $60+ a year.....

Norton's consumer products are terrible but their corporate ones are pretty good. All of the "internet security" stuff that gets its hooks into everything is what slows your PC to a crawl.

 

[dubsac]

Remember that Malwarebytes and (name your antivirus) are two different things that serve different purposes.

If you're looking for the "best", don't listen to anecdotal reviews on a gun board. Go find an unbiased review where they've tested several side-by-side against a static test system. Here's one from PCMAG, for example. Frankly, they all suck, but some suck less than others.

Winner winner

 

[Cameramonkey]

Microsoft Security Essentials + Windows Defender are sufficient in most cases.

However, if installing 3rd party software makes you feel better, try the free version of AVG.

Malwarebytes is a good solution if your PC is already infected.

ONLY ONLY ONLY if you are running windows 7. anything lower and you are screwed. Windows 7 security fixed critical holes that MSE doesnt cover.

Vipre for not free, you can get a license for 10 boxes, and I'm on my 10th. If you so much as plug your phone into the USB to charge it, it wants to scan it before it'll open the port. I also run Malwarebytes and Spyware Search and Destroy if something smells wrong.

UGH! Vipre was so bad my company walked away from 2 years of paid updates to switch to Sophos. (not available for consumer use... they concentrate 100% on corporate environments) Out of 500 PCs we averaged 2-3 infected PCs PER WEEK where Vipre wouldnt stop the threats. (among other technical problems that dont pertain to individuals)

MSE is by a wide margin the worst anti-malware product out there right now for Windows. It was recently rated to detect 61% of malware, with most others detecting 98%+.

Microsoft Security Essentials Misses 39% of Malware - Slashdot

^^^^^THIS^^^^^ (unless you are on windows 7 or greater. I have to think vista/xp does alot to poison the results of this study)

Norton is more hype and sales pitch than good anti-virus. It will slow your machine down and gets in to everything, not in a good way. Not to mention at $60+ a year.....

I used to love Norton... Now I wouldnt touch it with a 10 ft pole. Nothing like sitting on the phone for 45 minutes with support looping through the same script 3x to fix the problem, finally culminating in "OK, so where do we send the refund check to?" Nevermind the damage done to the PC... ugh.

Norton's consumer products are terrible but their corporate ones are pretty good. All of the "internet security" stuff that gets its hooks into everything is what slows your PC to a crawl.

Unless they have made massive strides in the past 4 years, I beg to differ. We ran SAV corporate and I LOVED it. Beautifully engineered, easy to manage and a STELLAR backend platform. I have used it as an example for ALL future products I evaluate and ask essentially "does its backend management system work like SAV?". Unfortunately, it just didnt stop the evolving threats. They were stuck in "antivirus" mode looking out for things that would destroy your pc, while letting in the newer forms of "malware" in that would add popups, redirect searches, and generally annoy you. I had no worries that SAV would protect my computers from catastrophic harm. However I saw it let harmful software through on a daily basis that made life hell for us as we repeatedly had to back up the data, wipe the system, and reload the data. Not very effective IMHO.

I have Avast running on no less than 50 systems between my personal systems and systems I do consulting for and (knock on wood) not a single compromised system.

 

[Scutter01]

Unless they have made massive strides in the past 4 years, I beg to differ. We ran SAV corporate and I LOVED it. Beautifully engineered, easy to manage and a STELLAR backend platform. I have used it as an example for ALL future products I evaluate and ask essentially "does its backend management system work like SAV?". Unfortunately, it just didnt stop the evolving threats. They were stuck in "antivirus" mode looking out for things that would destroy your pc, while letting in the newer forms of "malware" in that would add popups, redirect searches, and generally annoy you. I had no worries that SAV would protect my computers from catastrophic harm. However I saw it let harmful software through on a daily basis that made life hell for us as we repeatedly had to back up the data, wipe the system, and reload the data. Not very effective IMHO.

I have Avast running on no less than 50 systems between my personal systems and systems I do consulting for and (knock on wood) not a single compromised system.

SAV had a bit of a bleak period for a few years, but the recent iterations have been quite good, IMHO. We've been doing some SAV Cloud deployments, too, and had good results. Personally, I run Avast on my PC's just like you. From a system administrator standpoint, though, if it doesn't have centralized management and administration tools then I'm not interested in looking at it for a corporate deployment. The last thing I need is 1500+ machines pulling AV updates off the intarwebs every four hours. Talk about a bandwidth killer.

 

[Cameramonkey]

SAV had a bit of a bleak period for a few years, but the recent iterations have been quite good, IMHO. We've been doing some SAV Cloud deployments, too, and had good results. Personally, I run Avast on my PC's just like you. From a system administrator standpoint, though, if it doesn't have centralized management and administration tools then I'm not interested in looking at it for a corporate deployment. The last thing I need is 1500+ machines pulling AV updates off the intarwebs every four hours. Talk about a bandwidth killer.

No Sh**! Thats one of the reasons I abandoned Vipre. Their distribution method sucked a@@. I could either tier my updates, >OR< tier my management policies. Not both.

 

[bwframe]

I've run MSE and Spybot S&D daily for years on every machine (5). Problem free.

Maybe the XP machines aren't? Dunno, but they continue to work hard and produce every day...

 

[Scutter01]

I've run MSE and Spybot S&D daily for years on every machine (5). Problem free.

Maybe the XP machines aren't? Dunno, but they continue to work hard and produce every day...

Windows XP goes end-of-life in April. That means any new vulnerabilities will go unpatched (and the malware writers are already prepping dozens of exploits that have never been patched and now never will be). I HIGHLY recommend that you start looking at upgrading to something newer or different soon. XP is a great OS, but its time has passed.

Also, MSE is terrible. It only rates like 70% effective. Spybot S&D is a decent enough tool, but it's on-demand and focuses on spyware rather than viruses. Many viruses will be ignored completely. This is the same problem that Malwarebytes has. You say "problem free", but I'll bet you have something on every one of those PC's, but you don't know it because your tools are inadequate. I say this with 25 years experience dealing with desktop support issues.

My best advice is to keep all of your software patched, don't open attachments from the internet unless you are 100% sure they're clean ("my wife sent it" doesn't mean it's clean!), uninstall Java, install a javascript blocker in your browser (and only allow what you must), and don't do foolish things on your PC. That will take care of 99.99% of the viruses in the wild. Add your antivirus on top of that and you should be fine.

 

[Scutter01]

No Sh**! Thats one of the reasons I abandoned Vipre. Their distribution method sucked a@@. I could either tier my updates, >OR< tier my management policies. Not both.

In the enterprise world, you're really only talking about SAV and McAfee. Neither one are ideal, but of the two I have better results with SAV.

 

[Cameramonkey]

In the enterprise world, you're really only talking about SAV and McAfee. Neither one are ideal, but of the two I have better results with SAV.

Take a look at Sophos. Works like a champ. Better than those two IMHO. We started with their AV and were so enamored we upgraded to their content filters, and have also rolled their firewall into the mix. All work well, and our infection rate has dropped to less than 2 per MONTH (at 700 systems and climbing... it was 2-3 per week @500 systems with others)

Their SNORT based IPS is a bit overly sensitive with a few false positives, but overall I like it.

 

[Scutter01]

Take a look at Sophos. Works like a champ. Better than those two IMHO. We started with their AV and were so enamored we upgraded to their content filters, and have also rolled their firewall into the mix. All work well, and our infection rate has dropped to less than 2 per MONTH (at 700 systems and climbing... it was 2-3 per week @500 systems with others)

Their SNORT based IPS is a bit overly sensitive with a few false positives, but overall I like it.

Sophos is a very good AV as well, I just don't like their management tools. I would have no problem recommending it, though.

 

[PaulJF]

Remember that Malwarebytes and (name your antivirus) are two different things that serve different purposes.

If you're looking for the "best", don't listen to anecdotal reviews on a gun board. Go find an unbiased review where they've tested several side-by-side against a static test system. Here's one from PCMAG, for example. Frankly, they all suck, but some suck less than others.

Cliff notes please. Site works like **** on my phone.

 

[bwframe]

...My best advice is to keep all of your software patched, don't open attachments from the internet unless you are 100% sure they're clean ("my wife sent it" doesn't mean it's clean!), uninstall Java, install a javascript blocker in your browser (and only allow what you must), and don't do foolish things on your PC. That will take care of 99.99% of the viruses in the wild. Add your antivirus on top of that and you should be fine.

I follow these practices. I'm sure, at least partially, learned from you over the years. Thank you as always!

 

[Mackey]

AVG antivirus goes on all my machines.

Avg and malware bytes together and you'll likely never have a problem. I'd like to tell you why I know. But then it would reveal too much. We'll just leave it at that.

 

[danmdevries]

I don't keep on top of new PC tech. I used to, and I used to build my own new machine every two years. Recently I retired my newest machine (2008) and bought a used IBM through IBM's shareholder sale program. It's a 2011 machine, decent enough for web surfing and video streaming, which is all I use it for anymore, but it is by no means a powerful PC. (It cost me all of $185 with shipping, but was still a step up from my $1k in 2008 PC)

That said, I installed Avast upon recommendation from several sites/forums and found it to be a resource hog. Consistently running 40%cpu usage according to windows taskmgr and while I don't utilize my computer's full capabilities (of which it has few), it was notably slower.

Uninstalled Avast and went back to AVG and Malwarebytes. When your system is only marginally adequate, giving up 40+% makes it wholly inadequate.

 

[maddawg138]

i personally use Security Essentials by Microsoft. I also run Malwarebytes every so often as well and have yet to have a problem.

I use to go with Kaspersky until they made you pay for the service then thats when I switched to MSSE

 

[Tanfodude]

Norton is more hype and sales pitch than good anti-virus. It will slow your machine down and gets in to everything, not in a good way. Not to mention at $60+ a year.....

Not really true. I have 3 desktop and a laptop with Norton and I'm not experiencing a slow down considering I open multiple tabs and programs, I also alt tab between gaming and browsing. A lot of times, it's the amount of software running in the background that hogs your memory and cpu. Just chose the essential programs at start up and it'll make your pc run smoother.

Also Norton is free if you have Comcast.