Free Virus Scanners

[SurfD]

I recently hooked a friend of mine in my building up with high speed internet through my connection (routers are great), and he is now looking for a virus scanner.

I dont really want to install my version of Norton on his machine (pretty sure the licence code is only good for one machine per instalation), and he doesent want to fork out 40+ bucks for one of his own, so I thought I would ask the PC gurus here about free alternatives.

Any suggestions?  Not looking for anything super decked out with features.  Just a half decent virus scanner that gets updated fairly regularly.

[blindy]

AVG.  I have it on my home computer, and never had any problems with it.

[Soukyan]

AVG anti-virus should do alright for him (although it does fail to catch a fair amount of "In the Wild" viruses).

But quite honestly, I recommend he cough up the cash for a decent paid AV service. I highly recommend NOD32 as it uses very little system resources and is the absolute best at catching viruses (it has beat everyone and passed the most tests successfully as well as having the highest percentage of passes as well for the VB100 test). If he wants something more mainstream, go with Norton or McAfee. Either way, he should get an AV immediately and help minimize the propagation of viruses and spam from an unprotected PC.

[Alkiera]

Ya know, it's weird.
I've had a computer that frequented the internet since 1998.  Around 99 I got my first always-on connection, and have had one since.  A large portion of that time, my computer was directly on the internet, with no firewall.  Lately, I've had a hardware firewall, due to it being imbedded in my WAN router.

I've visited my share of disreputable sites in search of warez, so I'm not an internet Puritan.  On the other hand, I've never used Microsoft LookOut, and in fact, my email account are mostly acessed via web-browser (gmail, hotmail) or by SSHing to a *nix machine and using a mail client there (PINE, or MUTT).  I've recently set up Thunderbird to handle email from my ISP account, which I don't really use.

I've never used a passive/always-on virus scanner...  Occasionally, when I see odd things happen, I'll fire up a scanner and scan, but it's almost always an issue based on OS cruft or hardware/driver/software incompatibilities.  I've never identified a virus or trojan on my machine.

Given my experience, I'm baffled by the large number of people that insist 'Thou shalt run anti-virus software and a software firewall.' is the 11th commandment of God.

--
Alkiera

[Gong]

well, I guess it really depends on what sort of environment your computer is in. As an on-campus residing college student, my computer is practically exposed to pure hell daily. I am connected via LAN to hundreds of idiots who have no concept of spyware, virii, or worms. So many things propagate themselves over local networks that a firewall/AV program is crucial to my computer's good health.

at home, I ran a tight network, there were only 3 computers on the network, and everyone that used the computers had enough general computing sense to identify "bad stuff" and thereby avoid downloading it. I never needed a firewall or AV program, and I never had a problem. First semester at college last year was complete hell. My computer was horribly bogged down by the end of the first week, hit with the blaster worm and variants that were everywhere at the time. Didn't take me long to get a solid AV program and firewall up.

Just as an amusing note, a friend of mine had to format his computer at one point last year. We reinstalled windows XP on his box, and booted into Windows for the first time since the format. Before we even got to the login screen, he was already infected with blaster and welchia. It's crazy how fast some of that stuff spreads.

so overall, it's really up to you. if you're not on a network with a bunch of idiots, and you have a good sense of what's likely to be a virus/spyware/tc, then you will probably be ok as long as you make sure to grab any windows updates. however, I still strongly recommend it.  As Soukyan implied, what you do with your computer affects other people to a certain extent. An unprotected computer only worsens the problem of viruses and spam. Take the simple steps to protect your computer. TrendMicro HouseCall is a reasonably effective online virus scan, 100% free. The web version will obviously not protect your computer 24/7, but if you think you might have a virus, it's always a good idea to check. Sygate Personal Firewall is a free wirewall which provides a pretty good level of protection for individual PCs, I generally prefer it over ZoneAlarm.

[WonderBrick]

I only use http://housecall.antivirus.com.  But then again, I am the only person who ever uses my computers.  A good software firewall should keep out most of those direct-install trojans that earlier WinXP installs are not yet patched for.

The only virus I ever got infected with was WinCIH I got off a AOpen motherboard CD.  argh  I had to clean and reburn about 50 CDs.  The Half-Life 1 exe was what clued me in that I was infected, due to the anti-piracy check.

[Bunk]

I'll add a vote for AVG as well, its all I use at home.

[HaemishM]

I've been using AVG at home on 2 non-firewalled computers for a while now, and anytime it's missed something, checking the normal AV sites as well as updating AVG usually does the trick.