Free Virus Protection Software

[Guest]

Can you tell me which "Free Virus Protection" program is compatible with XP,
has the best coverage and is an easy program to follow?

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: "Cinderella" <[email protected]>

| Can you tell me which "Free Virus Protection" program is compatible with XP,
| has the best coverage and is an easy program to follow?

AntiVir -
http://www.free-av.com/ - FREE

 

[Newtechie]

I personally use Avast Home Edition and it's free. Another free one people
use is called AVG.

 

[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

There are several good free AV programs. AVG from Grisoft has a very good reputation.

AVG Free Advisor: AVG Anti-Virus Free:
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5

 

[DH]

There are several good free AV programs. AVG from Grisoft has a very good
reputation.

AVG Free Advisor: AVG Anti-Virus Free:
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5


--

Ronnie Vernon
Microsoft MVP
Windows Shell/User

Can you tell me which "Free Virus Protection" program is compatible with
XP,
has the best coverage and is an easy program to follow?

Although I believe that Avast is a great Anti-virus also, I second the
recommendation of AVG. A direct download can be had here:
http://free.grisoft.com/softw/70free/setup/avg71free_408a815.exe

Dave H.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Can you tell me which "Free Virus Protection" program is compatible
with XP, has the best coverage and is an easy program to follow?

Questions about "best" garner opinions, not answers. And when you ask for
opinions, you get a bunch of different ones.

That said, I'll give you my opinion. I run Avast on all my machines and
install it on others I support. I'm happy with it.

 

[Guest]

I thank you all for your answers. I apologize if I am not in the right
catagory here but I am having trouble navagating thru this help site. so I am
going to go with this and see what kind of response I get now. My problem
now is that I tried to download the "AVG Free edition" of virus software and
receive the following error messages. "some installation files are corrupt.
Please download a fresh copy and retry the installation". I press "OK" and
the following message appears "CRC failed in files.dat. unexpected end of
archive". So I go into control panel to uninstall avg but nothing is there.
There is however at the top of my list of programs a box with no
identification words, only a picture of a small computer and underneith it a
picture of a disk. Nothing else to describe what this program may be???????
now what?????

 

[Tom Willett]

Try the AVG support forums:
http://forum.grisoft.cz/freeforum/

 

[Guest]

the same thing happened to me when i tried to download AVG from 2 different
websites. Here's the website where the AVG download works:
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5

 

[Jim Cladingboel]

Cinderella,

I believe the AVG program ceases to be freeware from next month.
You might like to try Avast, which you can download from :
http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html
It seems to work well, and the automatic updates are so unobtrusive, you
don't know they've arrived until a dialogue box tells you.

HTH,

Jim

 

[Daave]

I believe the AVG program ceases to be freeware from next month.

Nope. 7.1 Free will no longer be supported, but 7.5 Free willl be!

 

[JackE]

Is it a bad idea to run more than one virus protection program on the same
machine? Will they conflict with each other? I've had terrible problems
with symantec, and recently reinstalled windows. I also installed PCTools
Spy Doctor.

 

[billyboy]

Thanks, Jack!

I didn't have them installed at the same time. They were installed run
separately.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Is it a bad idea to run more than one virus protection program on the same
machine?

It's fine as long as you don't run them both at the same time. If you
do that, they may conflict with each other.

Will they conflict with each other?

Very likely, if run at the same time.

I've had terrible problems
with symantec,

Join the club. It's probably the single worst security product on the
market.

 

[JackE]

Thanks, Ken. Based on previous advice in this thread, I installed the trial
version of Avast on my son's new computer. It was still running the trial
version of symantec that came with the computer.

After I installed Avast, I could not connect to the internet. I uninstalled
it, and was able to connect.

Do you think that this problem is related to having both programs on the
same machine? Symantec starts up automatically, so they were running
simultaneously although I was not using symantec to run a scan.

Or, is there some other setting with avast that I should deal with?
(firewall, etc). I couldn't find any troubleshooting advice on the avast web
site.

thanks in advance for your patience

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Thanks, Ken. Based on previous advice in this thread, I installed the trial
version of Avast on my son's new computer. It was still running the trial
version of symantec that came with the computer.

After I installed Avast, I could not connect to the internet. I uninstalled
it, and was able to connect.

Do you think that this problem is related to having both programs on the
same machine?

Very likely. I run Avast on all my computers here, without any
problems at all.

Symantec starts up automatically, so they were running
simultaneously although I was not using symantec to run a scan.

It's still running in the background. By the way, in my view, and that
of many of us here, Norton Antivirus is the single worst anti-virus
program there is. Avast is *much* better. If I were in your shoes, I
would keep Avast and dump NAV instead.