leanest free antivirus without popups

[GunsMadeAmericaFree]

I pretty much have my newly built PC set up the way I want it now, with the exception of antivirus software.

Long, long ago I used a program called PC-Cillin. For at least the last 6 years, I've used AVG Antivirus free. The last couple of times I've installed the latest version of that, I was struck with how there are more taskbars and crap that a person could easily accidentally install by not paying 100% attention during the install process.

I decided today to look online for perhaps a leaner, faster and possibly less intrusive antivirus program. I decided to stay away from Panda Cloud antivirus simply because of the many people who had problems with the software back when I was doing PC phone tech support for Systemax.

Several reviews said that Bitdefender Free was a great lean program that did its job well. Many also said that you almost wouldn't know it was running on the system - which sounded great to me, because there have been plenty of times I've definitely known AVG was running.

I installed Bitdefender Free, then noticed 2 things that bugged me right away:

1) there was a 30 day countdown going - nobody had mentioned anything about that in the
reviews.

2) evidently you HAVE to register your email address with them. Lots of people kept complaining online about the need to provide this, or else suffer numerous popup nag screens.

This didn't sound like the behavior of a free antivirus program that I wanted to have on my PC, so I immediately deleted Bitdefender.

Was I too hasty? Is there some way to run it without registering an account or having the popup spam screens? It looked like a decent program, but I'm not about to register an account with them, nor will I put up with popups from something I installed purposefully on my PC.

If you have any thoughts on this, I would appreciate hearing from you!

 

[cubby1223]

everyone uses microsoft security essentials + paid malwarebytes

 

[cubby1223]

if you have Win8, just uninstall all other antivirus software, and windows defender turns on automatically and runs in the background. Defender in Win8 is not Defender of xp/vista/7, it is the new security essentials.

 

[John Connor]

Ahh, no. Everyone doesn't use MSE and they lost their certificate. http://www.darkreading.com/vulnerab...ntials-loses-av-certification/d/d-id/1107614?

Bitdefender Free has no popups. Try it and see what you think. It's light weight and cloud based. It will block you from going to a website that is malware laden. I just regesterd. No harm no foul. It won't bug you after that. It's free. If a simple registartion bugs you for a free program then you have bigger problems.

I would also deploy Sandboxie for your browser and just configure it to delete contents on exit and store your profile and bookmarks.

 

[Continuity28]

Ahh, no. Everyone doesn't use MSE and they lost their certificate. http://www.darkreading.com/vulnerab...ntials-loses-av-certification/d/d-id/1107614?

Bitdefender Free has no popups. Try it and see what you think. It's light weight and cloud based. It will block you from going to a website that is malware laden. I just regesterd. No harm no foul. It won't bug you after that.

I would also deploy Sandboxie for your browser and just configure it to delete contents on exit and store your profile and bookmarks.

Bought Bitdefender, had too many issues with false positives and it was messing with legitimate applications. I went back to using MSE/Defender. It may be anecdotal, but I don't care, it's just my opinion afterall.... but I've never had any trouble with MSE/Defender, and I've never been infected.

 

[John Connor]

Some people do say it has false positives, but I have yet to see that. I use it on the laptop, and just use Sandboxie on the desktop along with Comodo firewall. If I introduce a file on the desktop I scan with clamwin and Malwarebytes.

 

[John Connor]

Windows Defender and Sandboxie could be ideal. I would turn off auto play on all drives though. Insert an infected USB stick and your SOL.

 

[lxskllr]

It is logical that program which is free is not good as the one which you need to pay.

It's not logical at all. Computing is dominated by the Linux kernel, and it's both libre and gratis. More to the point, antivirus is pretty much crap regardless of how much, or how little one paid for it. A product that doesn't get in the way is a mostly benign addition, but if you're hinging your security on av, you're gonna end up pwned.

 

[eternalone]

Avira, that is all you need.

 

[cubby1223]

Until any anti-virus software will detect and remove the conduit search protect software, in my opinion they are all crap products. I don't care about the court decisions. It's not worth paying for anything that doesn't do what you want it to do.

And go back a year, none of the av programs prevented Cryptolocker for quite some time. That was the worst virus I've seen in a long time, and not a single one helped protect against it.

A couple of the paid AV annoyances, Kaspersky occasionally pushes an ad to your desktop (presented as "news"). AVG hounds you mercilessly with emails, physical mail, and even multiple phone calls to renew, along with the weekly product up-sell they display to you in a system tray notification. Norton is a pain to dig through and turn off the relentless "everything's okay" notifications. McAfee still seems to kill the performance of most Windows systems it's installed on.

I've actually been installing ClamAV on more computers. Will it be better? I don't know. But the alternatives aren't attractive at all.

 

[John Connor]

Avira, that is all you need.

Avira has pop ups! I have it on my parents computer, plus if you install it it puts an ask toolbar in your browser and it's a PITA to remove Avira. You have to use their registry cleaner. Avira is all I used, but they are starting to suck bad!

 

[Aspendancer]

Bitdefender.

 

[phantom404]

I've used Avast for the past couple years. It has little pop ups down on the taskbar but only showing you when its been updated.

 

[Zorander]

I have been using Avast for the last 2 years and found it non-intrusive.

All I had to do were untick the additional toolbar during installation and disable voice notification. Pretty much runs in the background from there on.

 

[xgsound]

The free ones are Avira, AVG, Avast, and MSE. Which one is best or least irritating varies with time and your personal opinion. They seem to take turns
being the least irritating.

I've settled in on MSE for now since it needs no periodic intervention or renewal to remain in effect and current. This is particularly good for the
relatives that can barely work the computer.

No A/V is totally effective, so checking sometimes with your favorite Malware scanner is prudent. Lately I like Adwcleaner/ TDSSkiller for speed (10 minutes) and Malwarebytes for depth.

Jim

 

[Captante]

A combination of free Avast and Malwarebytes Pro ($15 lifetime) provides fairly effective protection with very few pop-ups to annoy when configured as Zorander mentions above.

 

[altairauditore]

I use Avira on Win7. It's free, I did not install the browser toolbar (It go automatically installed, but I removed it easily). Popups are like once on twice a day.

I'm pretty smart about what I download, so the free antivirus is more than enough for me.

 

[gammaray]

why use an anti virus at all? know what you are doing, don't visit porn (even then...) and you'll be fine.
you could always install malbytes anti malwares...

 

[CRCSUX]

A combination of free Avast and Malwarebytes Pro ($15 lifetime) provides fairly effective protection with very few pop-ups to annoy when configured as Zorander mentions above.

Mbam now has yearly subs

 

[nemesismk2]

I have recently started using the free avast with windows xp and if everything goes well i will probably pay because it's light weight and runs fast.

 

[sonitravel09]

Windows 8 already goes with Windows Defender that protects your PC. Just update your Windows regularly, you'll be fine.