Windows Virus scanners that don't suck.

[TheBigBradWolf]

Do you know of any virus scanners that don't suck? My dell came with McAfee which was using like 30 Megs of RAM continuously and made my computer take quite a bit of time to start up (more than 7 minutes). Uninstalling it makes my computer so much happier, until a bug comes along. So basically what I'm looking for is a virus scanner with lower overhead that will catch most stuff.

[cs-gr]

Hi,

Try the avg antivirus.. they have a free version too!

[mr nutso]

Check out Sygate:

http://smb.sygate.com/

We have the benefit of their enterprise solution on our home PC, since my wife uses it to access the network where she works.

[Cyker]

There's no such thing. They *all* waste vast amounts of resources and slow stuff down. That's just the way they are (They have to scan entire files everytime they're accessed, and Windows accesses files often and repeatedly...)

Unless you have a ninja computer, virus scanners will always throw down some kind of performance hit.

The worst one I've come across has to be Norton Anti-Virus - It is the Uber Resource hog. However it is good for people that know nothing about computers.

My compy's running 'commando', but as it's a Linux box I'm not too worried about viruses. At work we use Sophos Anti-Virus. It's totally no-frills and has no auto-update, but it's relatively small and quick (As long as you disable archive scanning...!). Average memory load is 15MB IIRC, but I can't remember how much of that was RAM vs Swapspace.

[TheBigBradWolf]

well, for obvious reasons, I don't need every process scanned...generally one doesn't...it'd be nice if instead of being a memory nuscience they just scanned when you asked them to.

[mr nutso]

I got to thinking about the need for constant virus scanning with a fire wall in place. I know a fire wall is supposed to prevent outside access to your PC, but does this include email and browsing as well (we have OLE set to check for new email on a periodic basis)?

I guess the question is, if you protect/scan the access points do you need to constantly scan files everytime they're accessed?

[hucsman]

Go Kaspersky (http://www.kaspersky.com/), soviet grade protection :D. Seriously though, Last time I checked it had the highest detection rate in the market, and it consumes around the third of the resources that Norton/McAffee do. Nicest thing is that it updates definitions around 5 times a day. With Kaspersky, zone alarm and ad-aware my computer is simply BULLETPROOF.

[m8rk]

another vote for AVG here. the other main free ones Kaperksy and Avast are also excellent. I also agree on disliking Norton a/v for it's bloat. I use Sophos at work and it does update from the net every hour. I was told that for corporate a/v trend a/v is the market leader. It has the smallest footprint of all which has to be a major plus.

Spyware is on the increase and i'd personally recommend protection with adawareSE, Spybot Search and destroy, and Microsofts new Antispyware tool [still in beta]

http://www.majorgeeks.com is a great source for everything I mentioned above, with the exception of the MS tool currently available from http://www.microsoft.com