Page 1 of Changing my free Antivirus recomendation

For a few years I used to recommend Avira, but various problems I had with it made me change that to Avast. I'm now changing my current recommendation for free AV to Bitdefender Free:
http://www.bitdefender.co.uk/solutions/free.html

If you want something that is incredibly quiet and doesn't bug you with any popups (unless it finds a virus), with low cpu impact (doesn't do any of the sudden random cpu spikes I was getting with Avast), and can live without it scanning your emails/websites for viruses, and sandboxing suspicious apps, I'd recommend switching to it.

Also given the highest star rating for coverage from independent tests, so it's as good as Avast and Avira in that regard:
http://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/home-windows/


I've been using it for a fortnight now.

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Interesting. Avast has been getting on my throopnies with all the nagging lately.

last install I switched to Avira from Avast as I was fed up of Avast monitoring me and the pop ups.

I didn't know bitdefender did a free version, I may try that next then as Avira has annoying pop up thing when I log in, I could probably turn it off if I could be arsed to work out how ;)

I updated my old dell d610 laptop to win10 the other day, not had chance to see how it runs yet on that old machine(it came with XP, I think it's a 2gb Centrino, I've upgrade the 512mb ram it came with to 2gb), but installed bitdefender with no prob.

cheers for the recommendation, thought some-one may like to know it works in 10 :)

This item was edited on Thursday, 11th June 2015, 12:42

I use AVG free, though it keeps coming up every three months with your free trial is over, but does not affect anything, as it keeps working.

Talk about inertia! I should have changed my anti-virus six months ago!

I had Avast, version 6, as I didn't appreciate all the internet always on, looking over your shoulder connected crap that came with later versions. I figured as long as the virus definitions were up to date I'd be covered.

So in January, Vista updates installed, and I started getting blue-screen errors about five minutes after start-up, once every three days or so, leading the computer to reboot. Spent a week faffing around trying to figure it out, uninstalling and reinstalling the updates. Like an idiot I did it so often that the Windows recovery point that was set when I installed the updates had been deleted by the time I thought of rolling back.

So I just lived with it for a month, hoping that the next update from Windows would fix it. That didn't work. Then I paid attention to when the Blue Screen would happen, and it looked like it happened when Windows Update checked for new updates. Tried disabling that, didn't work.

Then I noticed that the Blue screen really happened when my anti-virus updated its definitions and engine. Tried uninstalling and reinstalling and it made no difference. Tried the latest Avast and it was the same. By this point I'm no longer shutting the computer down and hibernating it instead, as that avoids the start-up blue-screen issue altogether. Figured I'd just live with it until it annoyed me again.

So day before yesterday, had reason to restart the computer and it blue-screened again. Straw that broke the camel's back. Took me 15 minutes to uninstall and clean Avast off the drive, and install Bitdefender... And problem fixed.

Motto of this story. Software engineers love to change things. Users don't.

===========================
Jitendar Canth

Quote:
"I thought what I`d do was, I`d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes."

Site Reviewer at DVD Reviewer & MyReviewer

Carving out a niche with a pneumatic drill at Anime @ MyReviewer.com

Definitely still never going to recommend Microsoft's own AV products:
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2944810/microsoft-subnet/microsoft-windows-security-tool-fails-malware-detection-test.html#tk.rss_all


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have put it on my other win 10 test machine as got fed with avast nag popups.

have just gone to check the win 7 laptop my missus uses had updated against the font thing you posted about. Anyway, she mentioned that she didn't know, as she just ignores any updates, especially the annoying Avast ones.

I log on every now and again, so I know she's talking about the annoying Avast nag/adverts, so off it goes to be replaced by bitdefender.

One thing I noticed since switching from Avast to Bitdefender, all those Windows updates that failed to install while I had Avast and Avira on my machine, have gradually been 'rediscovered' by Windows update, and have been installing without issue.

===========================
Jitendar Canth

Quote:
"I thought what I`d do was, I`d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes."

Site Reviewer at DVD Reviewer & MyReviewer

Carving out a niche with a pneumatic drill at Anime @ MyReviewer.com

Currently running Kasperksy on three machines, an old XP machine, Win 8.1 laptop and Win 7 desktop.

Very happy with the low system impact, not so happy with some things not working. I'm not sure if Kasp is the problem or not, well I am for some things. Like TLS to my mail server doesn't work, so I have to disable mail scanning on it.

Also I had issues with ebay and firefox saying the certificate had expired, but disabling the Kaspersky plugin made that error vanish.

It complains every secure wireless network I connect to is insecure, and also I've had issues with the wireless network then disconnecting and no amount of reconnecting without a power cycle or hibernate brings it back.


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