What's the best free things to use to stop betting viruses & spyware?

Anti-Virus:
http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/free/
http://www.free-av.com/
http://www.avast.com/i_idt_1018.html
http://free.grisoft.com/
http://www.bitdefender.com/
http://www.clamwin.com/

Anti-Spyware:
http://www.lavasoft.de/software/adaware/
http://www.arovaxshield.com/download.php
http://www.kephyr.com/spywarescanner/index.html
http://www.zamaansoft.com/products/bhr/
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html
http://spybot.safer-networking.de/
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html
http://www.wilderssecurity.net/spywareguard.html
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/toolbarcop.htm
http://www.donationcoders.com/kubicle/watcher/index.html
http://www.winpatrol.com/
http://winpooch.free.fr/home/index.php

Take your pick. Though I use Ad-Aware and Spybot S&D. Never bother with anything else.

Top man!

some good stuff there

AVG (Liked it so much i bought it and the firewall, works like a charm) and Ad-Aware keep my system clean

How often do you scan your pc?

Quote from jaws99 :

How often do you scan your pc?

AVG - tbh i haven't for ages, i don't know, once a month?

I would also like to recommed www.nod32.com very good antivirus software wich isnt a hog on your system

NOD32 is awesome, I had the trial but im too tight to pay for the full version atm, so i'm using AVG free justnow - generally keeps me safe, along with Ad-Aware SE and common sense

Cheers for your help lads

I prefer avast. AVG is abit out of date for me. Although it is still good. Avast and Zone Alarm (www.zonalabs.com) have kept me going for about 2 years without problems, also avast is available for free (full version) for home use only. (www.avast.com)

Is Norton AV any good?

Quote from jaws99 :

Is Norton AV any good?

Wouldnt know since I havent used norton since my freebie expired about 5 years ago.

Quote from jaws99 :

Is Norton AV any good?

no, its rubbish and over priced

Quote from jaws99 :

Is Norton AV any good?

Is cancer any good?

Norton started good (like back in the 90's), but over time it has become very much like Windows, bloated.

Avast!

I'm a fan of AVG Free and Spybot S&D.
There's certainly no need to pay for spykillers or AV these days, those two are pretty good. I don't limit myself to just one of each though - pays to have a second opinion, as it were

Ad-Aware looks good on paper but from what I've read it sounds inefficient, prone to false positives and pretty easy to circumvent if you're a competent e-bastard...short article here

Cheers mate.

What about firewalls. Any you'd recommend for free?

Quote from jaws99 :

What's the best free things to use to stop betting viruses & spyware?

Common sense.


I'm not kidding, this makes up for a lot. But to better be safe than sorry, I have Avast running, too, but no firewall because I'm sitting behind a router anyway. I had ZoneAlarm installed for a while but all it really did was putting out "alarming" numbers on completely usual stuff. Outgoing connections are pretty much controlled by the Windows firewall, so I decided to scrap ZA.

But for christs sake don't use Norton. I know Tristan still cannot let go of it (), but it's widely known to reduce performance and program startup speeds big time. Many older games also crash or refuse to work because Norton decides to block a certain game logic that looks "evil" to it. Even if you exclude the game from its scanning list.

I cannot say too much on the effectivity of either AV system, because in all my years of owning a PC, I only had a virus once, which I got over a Hamachi network share from a bit too careless friend. Even then, the AV wouldn't have saved me, as it could only identify the infected files, but not stop the process that did that. Hooray taskmanager. Well, my friend needed a reinstall, I only lost 10 files I think we both used AntiVir back then.

Quote from AndroidXP :

Common sense.

I haven't had any firewall, anti-virus or anti-spyware apps installed for ages, and Windows firewall is off. Haven't had any virus or malware problems for *ages*.

Likewise, I have not used an anti-virus/firewall/anti-spyware stuffs in close to like 4 years and haven't had any problems. Virtually every computer other than my own that I come into contact with has some sort of virus/malware/spyware on it (usually Norton :P) and my first reaction always it to run usual assortment of anti-spyware tools (Spybot and Ad-Aware), do the usual CoolWebSearch Cleaner, and kill f-kng norton and replace it with Avast.

Well my last computer got attacked to death by viruses. I never went on any suspicous websites or downloaded files without first scanning them so i don't know how i got them. I once tried Norton and it does really slow the pc down big time!


What firewalls do you use?

Ad-aware, Spybot S&D, Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition(free from my college :-) ) is what I use. Also Regseeker to clean the registry once in awhile, and MRU-Blaster to get rid of useless MRU lists and such. Antivirus scans every night at 4am and I manually run everything else about once a week.

Quote from NetDemon01 :

Ad-aware, Spybot S&D, Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition(free from my college :-) ) is what I use. Also Regseeker to clean the registry once in awhile, and MRU-Blaster to get rid of useless MRU lists and such. Antivirus scans every night at 4am and I manually run everything else about once a week.

Antivirus scans every night at 4am wow that's a lot.

i un-installed norton from a guys pc who i work with, because it's crap. I put avg free on, did a scan and it found 12 trojans

Does AVG come with a firewall?