by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Monday September 24, 2012 @03:40PM (#41441483)
Windows: Microsoft Security Essentials, free if you have Microsoft Windows XP or higher, and it does work especially for the technical, not too adventerous link clicker. Gives you that extra layer of protection you seem to want for those 'oh shit' moments.
I can second this, and I should also add that the functionality is built-in to Windows 8 as Windows Defender. Same functionality as MSE, just relabeled. The old Windows Defender is dead.
I can third this, but I'm wondering where the antitrust lawsuit is... I think MS were tiptoeing around it by making MSE a separate download, but as soon as they start bundling it with the OS it has antitrust written all over it...
They were sued out for internet explorer because they were using anti-competitive practices to stifle the entire internet ecosystem. MSE is only for Windows and can only be for Windows so Microsoft making it might as well have it considered a part of the OS since it is only there to solve the problem of bad user privileges that have plagued Windows for 20 years.
Reasons why I think there is not, and will never be an antitrust lawsuit over this: 1. Antivirus should be part of the operating system. It is a critical aspect of a stable system. 2. Nobody cares about Microsoft anymore, they are loosing so much market share to Apple etc. Microsoft have good grounds to say 'not a monopoly' 3. Antivirus is an industry that has peaked - not a growing, sexy industry like the dotcom was. 4. (Conspiracy warning) Prior to viruses having economic benefit in themselves as botnets and
Not only is it a reasonably good anti-malware tool, its the least intrusive one I've ever used, both as far as annoying popups and abusing system resources. My first download on any new Windows install.
Not only is it a reasonably good anti-malware tool, its the least intrusive one I've ever used, both as far as annoying popups and abusing system resources. My first download on any new Windows install.
Yup, I recently switched all my Windows boxes to MSE from AVG, as AVG started giving me fits after the v.11 update.
Yep.. I'm a big-ol M$ hater, and I can say that MSSE is a pretty decent product.. FIrst thing I put on everyone else's computer after I fail to convince them to run Linux..
Second this. It's the best thing I've ever seen from Redmond. If all their software worked like this their suckometer would read a hell of a lot lower.
Second this. It's the best thing I've ever seen from Redmond. If all their software worked like this their suckometer would read a hell of a lot lower.
If their other software (read: Windows) worked like 'this', then 'this' wouldn't be needed in the first place./smirk
Not true. Unless 'working like this' means sandboxes almost everything[1]. Most people get pwned not because of Windows bugs, but because they actually run the malware, or got exploited by a drive-by browser/pdf bug (Firefox, IE, Adobe etc all have had drive-by bugs). There were even viruses that were in password protected zipfiles, people had to enter the password in the email and open the file, and still many actually did that! In such scenarios even if they were running Linux or OSX they'd get pwned. [1]
Well then you obviously don't have any mid to large size archives on your disk. MSE chokes and uses tons of CPU ( a known issue, supposedly "has gotten better" , not that you would notice a whole lot... ) on rar / or zip files and sometimes cab files when it scans random files in the background and lands on the archive. I've had it choke off a dual core 3.2Ghz processor so bad I thought I was back on a 486DX again with the program load / wait times.
That said it SEEMS to do a decent job, either that or I'm
I'd have to disagree. We used to use it on mammography workstations dealing with sets of 8 80+MB files per study with no problem. The files were regularly compiled into standard ISO's, and again, no issues. The same workstations could also be used to load JPG2000 Animation files (MR and CT scans) which sometimes contained 3-4000 images, and again, no issues (these were not lots of small images, rather several thousand full resolution images in a single file). We honestly had more issues with Nod32, plus it cost more. We ended up moving everyone off of Eset NOD32 over to MSSE because it was free with the windows license and worked just as well. Outside of work, I've regularly had several multi-gb files with no problems (including 10+GB virtual hard disk files).
MSE is not free: it is free for home users. Business may use only up to ten free licenses before they are required to upgrade to Forefront. If you're a business and using more than ten copies of MSE, you're breaching the license agreement.
Correct. Since most of our vuatomers had, at most, 4 workstations (they run arounf 100-200k) that's not a huge limited. Though it does sound like they changed their structure, as I said while I still worked there (~3 years ago) the license was that it was free so long as you had a valid Windows seat.
Well, either you got lucky or I, and lots of other people, pack our archives oddly. There was either a KB article or a dev blog at MS about mspeng.exe ( thats the scanner process ) chewing the crap out of your CPU. That was what the claim was anyways, that it was doing a random scan in a large archive. I do have some rather large archives, as well as some huge files( think 50-80GB+ backup disk clones ). It has gotten better recently, but I still do get infrequent spike where mspeng.exe just sits and chews
Is that it updates itself via Windows update. So should it fail to get a virus database update internally, Windows update will fix it. If there's a new version, Windows update will get it. Very good for people who just don't want to mind after the program.
That said, I think there are pay for solutions that are better (NOD32 is what I like) but if you want free, it works great.
Is that it updates itself via Windows update. So should it fail to get a virus database update internally, Windows update will fix it.
Actually, I believe MSSE only auto-updates via its own, internal mechanism. Virus databases do also show up in Windows Update, but they're always marked "optional," and they will go away once MSSE downloads that update itself. You can choose to apply the updates manually via Windows Update, though.
Wait, you have people that actually accept the Windows Updates? Everyone I know just closes the pop-up, and when I show up (virus / malware, or running really slowly) I see "926923798257 updates to install" (yes, I'm exaggerating).
Actually, you probably don't have to exaggerate too much on that. On a number of occasions, when rebooting after installing updates I've been greeted by a screen saying something like "Installing update 1 of 12000". First time I saw that I was in shock, but then it only took 30 seconds or so to zip through it all. Not sure what was going on, but I suspect it was checking thousands of registry keys and counted each one as an update for some reason. Thankfully they don't each get their own entry in the update
I downloaded and executed a program called windows web commander while running MSE. It gave me no warning. I had to restore the computer to a date before downloading to get it to work again. It started with a pop up message stating I had a virus. The program asked for money to remove the virus which was essentially itself.
I downloaded and executed a program called windows web commander while running MSE. It gave me no warning. I had to restore the computer to a date before downloading to get it to work again. It started with a pop up message stating I had a virus. The program asked for money to remove the virus which was essentially itself.
Even the best code can't fix stupid...
NO anti-virus/anti-malware/anti-rootkit/etc gets them all. AV is run as an early warning system. If something slips past, you either restore from backup or scan with another tool and hope it finds whatever got past the first tool.
Just adding my voice to this - I use MS because it doesn't do any of the annoying crap that other free AVs I've tried do. No sudden 100% CPU usage for 20 minutes, no pop-up adds. My only slight gripe is that it seems to do a brief scan on startup, which slows down your startup time (time taken from booting up until your HDD stops chewing), and I can't see a way to turn this off. But all AVs I've tried do the same thing.
Also, it has one of the smallest memory footprints (under 50 Mb) and you can turn it off (believe it or not, some AVs can't be turned off except by uninstalling).
The only thing AV provides is a false sense of security. With AV, you're waiting until AFTER an infection occurs and then HOPING the AV company you've chosen has A) seen the malware before, B) bothered to add a signature to their definitions list, and C) is actually capable of removing the virus.
Better ideas: Turning on AppLocker & running most of the time as an unprivileged user. Check out OSSEC for use as a File Integrity Monitor and Host-based Intrusion Detection System. Disable unnecessary services, remove unnecessary programs, use an ad-blocker, a "default deny all" firewall policy and get a 3rd party patch manager to keep all your non-MS bits up to date. Secunia PSI is a free patch manager/vuln scanner for home use - there are others.
The only thing AV provides is a false sense of security. With AV, you're waiting until AFTER an infection occurs and then HOPING the AV company you've chosen has A) seen the malware before, B) bothered to add a signature to their definitions list, and C) is actually capable of removing the virus.
Not quite (although maybe true years ago).
Firstly, unless you have done a VERY poor job of installing it, the AV will scan files BEFORE it will allow them to run, not wait until you've run them and then try to clear up the mess. I think you may be getting mixed up with disinfection tools (which often come bundled with AV). These are used post-infection to clean up, but I haven't encountered anyone who has relied on these alone.
Secondly, nearly EVERY AV product I have seen and used in the past decade (e
With one exception - it's stubborn as a pit bull when it thinks it's found something. Several times now I've had hacktools such as revelation get flagged for being just that, hacktools. I select "ignore" and poof, the file is deleted anyway. It seems like the only way I could get it to actually ignore the file was to just X out of the pop-up. Mostly I agree with you though. PLUS the one-license per client seat policy is fantastic. It lets workstation resellers bundle it with their systems for free. Buyers g
Before you call MSE non-intrusive, you might want to read this...
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5924707/fwrite-chokes-on-xml-version/ [stackoverflow.com]
Overall, the other "AV" products are orders of magnitude worse in bloat and intrusiveness, but I can't believe they messed up something as fundamental as this...
I'd still prefer Linux (Ubuntu or similar 6-month cycle) + VirtualBox with Windows in VirtualBox and the VirtualBox USB 2.0 extension. Data on a shared media drive (like/home/User/vmshared/)
I've had MSE detect & clean that one of the other free products (think it might have been Avast?) didn't catch - and MSE is no-nonsense, doesn't get in your way, haven't given me false positives (it does flag stuff like keygens though:)), and isn't too hard on system resources.
Combine that with FireFox + AdBlockPlus + NoScript + Ghostery + Certificate Patrol and some common sense, and you should be pretty well off.
Add to the items you list EMET - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29851 [microsoft.com]. This is a free download from Microsoft that allows you to protect processes (such as IE and Java) from well known exploit techniques (such as heap spray, etc.). As an example, it protected against this latest IE zero day "execCommand Use After Free Vulnerability - CVE-2012-4969". We (large enterprise) had no worries at all about that vulnerability since we have EMET deployed and configured. Here's the MS02-063 bulletin - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms12-063 [microsoft.com]. If you expand the execCommand node and look at the mitigations you'll see you would have been protected. Often times Adobe Flash bulletins mention that EMET was a mitigation for the plethora of vulnerabilities that Adobe Flash code contains.
Ah yes, forgot to list that one in the bunch - EMET is nice indeed! It's not a failsafe security guarantee, but it does add a nice extra bit of security. Do be sure to test configuration before rolling out corporate-wide, as some software is incompatible with some of the mitigations:)
Oh, and one more (and perhaps obvious) thing: disable Flash, Java and Adobe-PDF in your main browser, as those are the main attack vectors these days. Have a secondary browser/profile for the times you need any of these. Use a
I notice the latest flash installer installs Chrome, whether you want it or not! For AV at home I have been using the AVG freebie for the best part of a decade, I contemplated abandoning it when it went through an attention whore stage with pop-ups for everything, but the current version is unobtrusive and just works.
It's a bit bothersome indeed, and you risk ending up whitelisting too much on some sites, as it can be slightly difficult figuring out exactly what you need to whitelist - but IMHO it's worth it. And even if you whitelist a bit too much on a site you're purposely trying to get working, you'll probably still be blocking eventual drive-by nasties on other sites.
AdBlockPlus wasn't just mentioned for convenience, btw, but because compromised banner servers is an ideal way to deliver malware - if a legitimate ba
A decent point, I guess. I'd still go with AdBlockPlus, though, but whitelisting the sites that are worth it - even though you don't get "full protection", at least it helps reducing the risk of random drive-bys on random sites. And as long as you don't have flash, java or the pdf plugin, you're a long way towards safety.
And as long as you don't have flash, java or the pdf plugin, you're a long way towards safety.
I leave the flash plugin disabled, and only enable it for youtube videos that don't work with HTML5 (unless I use youtube-dl). I never used PDF plugins; I think it is much better to open PDF files with a dedicated viewer (in my case, evince). I recently disabled Java because of the 0day shenanigans and I only enable it for one (trusted) site that needs it.
By the way, I have realized that I care a lot about computer s
I can second this. I've taken to using the MSE offering for family that are on Windows. Two simple reasons. I can flat out tell them to ignore any web prompts for 'free virus scans' and whatnot. Ignore any prompts to purchase virus scan 'updates', etc,
It also removes the irritating ad-ware that Avast and AVG are pushing out lately. They are doing more and more prompts to 'upgrade' which is confusing to older family members. Considering you're a techy this is probably a non-issue, but I do find comfort in the fact that the MS offering isn't likely to quarantine key OS files as Avast and AVG have done multiple times over the last few years.
Agreed. MSE is the the only free antivirus worth anything. The rest are being monetized and try to trick you into buying the paid ones, if they don't just plain suck. Also the only one I don't feel is slowing down my computer. Before MSE, I just didn't use any, the AV was worse than the rare virus infection.
Agreed. MSE is the the only free antivirus worth anything.
I've always had an issue of trust with MSE... the reason to run AV software is I don't trust Microsoft to write a secure OS.
Trusting them to write the AV software has always seemed like quite a leap for me -- if you can spot them, fix the damned OS.
Granted, I've heard people say really nice things about it. But it has always sounded like asking the security guard who keeps leaving the door unlocked to check if the door is unlocked.
Not the same thing IMO. A great amount of malware requires that the user does something. So "download our.exe and ignore the security prompts!" is still a very large section of things, and has nothing to do with a secure OS or not. Programs running as a user has as many rights as a user themselves. That's what most virus software is for: detecting that you're trying to run something that's "bad" but it's not exploiting security holes to do so. It's just running with "full trust" just like any other program on your machine, and behaving badly.
Not all malware uses security vulnerabilities to do its thing. And MS security is pretty good these days. Don't let the past blind you to the best free AV for Windows.
Don't let the past blind you to the best free AV for Windows.
It's a long past to get over.:-P
But I have been seriously considering switching to MSE for quite some time now -- AVG has been really getting more annoying with each release.
But that doesn't mean that it's easy to say "oh, it's Microsoft, they must know lots about security" since for a lot of years they clearly knew nothing at all about it.
Not only off-topic, you are also bad at trolling. Also I wonder how "families" can understand technology as a group; how do you aggregate individual expertise? Is the family understanding based on the highest, lowest, average or median understanding of individuals? And does "family" apply only to parents and children living under the same roof, or only to those sharing a computer? You need to provide more details about your deep analysis of how Linux solves the problem of choosing a free antivirus.
I would have agreed 2 years ago the 10.04 netbook release was near perfect for non technical users. Unfortunately it got abandoned and they concentrated on unity.
Just what is wrong with providing a list of programs logically grouped. Just type the name, you jest. I've used Linux for years and i am still not 100% on the names of the programs I use.
The 12.04 gnome classic is a joke. I just had to explain alternative ways to close programs since firefox for example when maximised loses the close X from the wind
Kde isn't the worst, but i have an old dislike for it, going back to suse. That was 6 or 7 years ago but there are very nice kde apps. If mint becomes annoying i may well switch again.
Ubuntu was pretty good but they seem to have lost their way which is a pity since it was great, the unity interface just doesn't work for me or my systems.
KDE greatly improved since the infamous 4.0 switch. I run KDE 4.9.1 (from ppa, regular Ubuntu packages are somewhere at 4.8.x), and it's perfectly usable. I have changed the layout to the GNOME-ish two panels, replaced fancy menu with traditional one, moved applets around and configured compiz as a window manager. compiz did not start properly in 4.8.x, I had to include it in startup, so first kwin started, then compiz replaced it, however in 4.9.1 just selecting compiz as a window manager works without any
I don't think that's really a fair analogy. Anti-virus software attempts to detect malicious code and prevent it from doing damage. Yes, some malicious code is executed via zero-day vulnerabilities in operating systems (i.e. security guard left a door unlocked), but a lot of virus infections are caused by unsafe user behavior. Users open/execute unknown email attachments, click malicious links, and willingly install sketchy software that purports to do some useful function for free while doing something
Agreed. MSE is the the only free antivirus worth anything. The rest are being monetized and try to trick you into buying the paid ones, if they don't just plain suck. Also the only one I don't feel is slowing down my computer. Before MSE, I just didn't use any, the AV was worse than the rare virus infection.
I had Avast on one computer a while ago. That was actually quite unobtrusive. That or MSE would be my choice.
Agreed. MSE is the the only free antivirus worth anything. The rest are being monetized and try to trick you into buying the paid ones, if they don't just plain suck. Also the only one I don't feel is slowing down my computer. Before MSE, I just didn't use any, the AV was worse than the rare virus infection.
I had Avast on one computer a while ago. That was actually quite unobtrusive. That or MSE would be my choice.
I dropped Avast when I started getting pop ups advertising Avast for Android, Avast for Mac, etc. They used to be pretty good. Then it the destination was Spam City aboard the Bloatware Express, with stops at the Upsell Station every year.
I use MSE for signature-based protection, and Threatfire for behavior-based protection. These work well together for me and take up a very small footprint.
It should be pointed out though, Antivirus will have nothing to do with preserving the liftime of your PC. A virus (usually) can't damage the PC, it might destroy the data on it, but you can just reinstall in a worst case scenario.
* There have been some viruses in the ancient past that could damage a PC, such as forcing the hard drive to bash it's heads against the parking zone, or writing to some bizarre register in the bios that could cause some kind of hardware damage, but 99.99999% of viruses to
> A virus (usually) can't damage the PC, it might destroy the data on it, but you can just reinstall in > a worst case scenario.
In the very narrow realm of "Physical Damage to your PC", you are absolutely correct. There are some, at least theoretical, exceptions.... CRT monitors that could be put into damaging modes... excessive constant drive access could decrease its lifetime.... some flash technologies have limite dwrites.... meh.... no big deal.
That said, damage to my pc doesn't even enter into my "worst case scenario" when it comes to this sort of compromise.
My worst case involves things like, I connect to work from home and they steal my credentials (of course 2 factor auth helps but, even without my token they can still get in when I connect). Install a keylogger on the box and get my banking passwords and clean out my accounts.
I was responding to the question askers comment about wanting "to make sure that my recent investment in an Acer laptop will last me a good long while"
Virus software will not prolong the lifetime of your laptop.
The BBC Micro User Guide had a sentence early on saying (paraphrase) "Feel free to experiment, there's nothing you can damage that can't be fixed by power-cycling".
But: 10 *MOTOR 1 20 *MOTOR 0 30 GOTO 10... would burn out the cassette relay if you left it running for a couple of minutes.
It should be pointed out though, Antivirus will have nothing to do with preserving the liftime of your PC.
You'd be surprised. I've known people who get a computer, use it until it's so bogged down with crap and viruses that it's unusable*, then toss it out and get a new one. They have no conception of what a recovery disk/partition is. At all. Software and hardware are all part of the magic box and they have no interest in differentiating.
(* For these people, half an hour boot time is merely "slow". Unusable means "won't boot".)
One that immediately springs to mind is Medusa. I lost a machine to this in 1999(?): the thing wrote itself to the BIOS and killed the system dead. I managed to save everything else, but a new mainboard was required as I couldn't simply reflash the thing.
Seconded, MSE works just great, without any hassle. The other product that I use is Panda Cloud Antivirus. It does occasionally try to persuade you to buy the full version, but otherwise it just works, and it is lighter on the CPU than MSE. I used to be a bit fan of Avira Antivirus, but it got too annoying, and had too many false positives for comfort.
Hate to deviate from the bandwagon, but there is a big downside to MSE. MSE is the program that every piece of malware tries to disguise itself as when they do their "a threat has been found! Click this button to remove it, then restart your computer!" routine to try and install themselves and take over your OS. It's a lot easier to tell the fake warnings from the real warnings when the fake warnings are claiming to be a program you don't even use.
I find the free MS product excellent, unobtrusive and very very effective. I have way less issues then anyone I know with norton....
Norton installed crap on my NIC driver once. Took me two days to spot it - thought I had a mobo failure. I uninstalled Norton immediately I spotted it, and haven't bought one of their products since.
Peter Norton should sue Symantec for defamation of character.
The original Norton Utilities were lean, mean must-haves. Anything called "Norton" nowadays is a steaming pile of shit that you run away from as fast as you can.
Nix on that one. MS security essentials is the only anti-virus that did more damage than an actual Virus. With default settings, SE took it upon itself to delete an entire e-mail folder in thunderbird, silently and with no warning, because of a simple e-mail virus. Not quarantine, mind you, just outright delete.
I would argue that this is a failure on Mozilla's part for designing the email container on the file system to be one giant archive file. Why they did this is utterly beyond me, and caused me no end of hassle with backups and virus scanning.
FWIW, if the default behaviour upon discovery of an infection is to delete the file, and you have enabled scanning within archives, any anti-virus software would have done the same thing.
It is free and easy to use. It also seems to be easier on the resources than some other tools. However I have had it miss things that other programs found (and they were NOT false positives). I know of other people that have experienced this problem as well. I recently looked through some antivirus comparisons and MSSE really fell short on a few of those tests. If I remember correctly, one of these tests had MSSE fail to detect about 14%. I would look for other software.
That's true of every AV product in existence. None of them catch everything. Other people have seen MSE catch things that the others miss, and in other cases MSE misses stuff the others find.
The question is always that risk as compared to the cost of the AV. In the case of something like Norton, the AV itself is worse then most viruses for computer usability.
No product is perfect, think of AV as kind of like locking your car. If you have glass windows, that lock won't stop someone who really wants in. I think its strength lies in the fact that it's so unobtrusive. You'll rarely see it turned off because nobody even knows the thing's there in the first place. It doesn't inform you when it's updating or pop up to tell you you're protected and never tries to scare the end user with dire warnings about being unprotected unless they pony up $$$ for a subscription. T
Another vote for MSE. My only problem is it takes forever to run a full scan compared to other apps. I bet a full scan takes 3-4+ hours on my system. But, I always try to have at least 2 anti-virus apps installed and let them run a different times late at night.
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Monday September 24, 2012 @05:59PM (#41443319)
Uh oh, sounds like you might have an infection that's sapping your performance. Might need to get a third antivirus program and install it alongside the other two. Make sure you leave realtime scanning on so that all three of them get a good look at every file that the system is opening and closing behind the scenes. Surely one of them can identify the rogue files.
FWIW, Ive heard noise that Avast 2012 is faster and more accurate. Just downloaded it on my laptop, not sure if I notice any difference over MSSE / Forefront.
I'll second the recommendation of Comodo. It's a good suite, for both beginners and advanced users. The "Defense+" is especially nice, since it allows/blocks on application behavior.
MSE has always been good for me on Windows systems with one exception:
On my Windows 7 VM on my work laptop (a Mac) it chokes badly whenever it tries to perform a full scan. Even set to use minimal CPU, it somehow still seems to clog the complete system (I assume it's method for determining CPU usage doesn't work nicely under that VM scenario).
Since I'm using the VMWare option to "share" folders so my desktop, documents, etc are virtual locations shared from the real Mac folders, the scan attempts to go thr
I'm running Fusion 5.0.1 with the same setup (only 57.6 gig on the desktop tho) on a laptop, so 2.5' platter drive. Not seeing that CPU issue but getting lots of slowdowns when both OSes hit the drive at the same time. If you install MenuMeters it will be invaluable in seeing what your mac is doing when it grinds to a halt and at least give you a fighting chance to diagnose the problem.
I'm running Fusion 5.0.1 with the same setup (only 57.6 gig on the desktop tho) on a laptop, so 2.5' platter drive. Not seeing that CPU issue but getting lots of slowdowns when both OSes hit the drive at the same time. If you install MenuMeters it will be invaluable in seeing what your mac is doing when it grinds to a halt and at least give you a fighting chance to diagnose the problem.
Oddly, I don't find simultaneous access to be much of a problem. This is also a 2.5" inch drive of course; being in my MacBook Pro.
I hadn't heard of MenuMeters - it looks useful for quick "at a glance" overviews of the system; however for this particular case, I already took a look at what it's doing using top on the command-line and only saw that (as somewhat expected by the performance) VMWare was using an excessive amout of CPU and there was a lot of disk activity in general.
I manually scan everything I download and I make sure AV is patched before I do, but MSE completely missed several viruses and trojans in an executable recently, and these were not new viruses. This caused major headaches and many hours of troubleshooting. If you fully trust MSE as your only AV solution then you are unprotected.
I submit downloads from untrusted sources to VirusTotal [virustotal.com] Discerning which results are false positives and which are from less recently updated signatures isn't something for the lay man, though.
My only qualm with MSE: My mother-in-law (and my wife's sister, who lived with the m-i-l) managed to impressively infect a Windows XP system that I had MSE installed on.
So far as I could tell, something broke Windows updates, which in turn meant that MSE updates didn't flow, and the infestation ran wild... to the point that the computer was unusable.
In my work experience, it's easy for Windows updates to break or be broken. It was nonfunctional on my work computer for the better part of a year before I reloaded it.
This experience led me to believe that antivirus should have its own, hardened, secure, simple update path independent of Windows system management technologies.
Not sure I'd want to help someone leverage their desktop monopoly to kill off even more third party developers nor do I really trust someone who gets security wrong more often than they should.
I used to recommend MSE, however after it not finding something when I KNEW there was a virus, only avira was able to find it and remove it.
Ever since then, I have swore by avira. However you do have to jump through hoops to get it working though, such as having to blacklist avnotify.exe in secpol so you don't see avira ads. Annoying, and why it makes it difficult to recomend to anyone who is not comfortable with editing windows security policies.
One small note, MSE is *not* available for 64 bit XP. So in the (admittedly unlikely) case that your laptop has XP 64 bit on it you'll have to look further.
Your first line of defense, as always, is safe surfing, but Avira is going OK for me. It'll annoy you with occasional pop-ups but they are easy to dismiss.
I wouldn't recommend it; every time I see MSE on a client's PC, it has the attention icon because manual intervention is required for it to update, and it does not seem to prompt users unless they notice the icon change in the notification bar and prompt an update manually.
Want a decent free antivirus? Get Comodo Internet Security which I have found to be extremely effective,or Immunet (free version) and enable the ClamAV definitions.
Aside from requiring the user to be observant and proactive, MSE started o
Check out www.virusbtn.com for their VB100 comparison of antivirus solutions. Avira free comes out ahead of the majority of the best known commercial offerings.
"If you want to know what happens to you when you die, go look at some dead
stuff."
-- Dave Enyeart
Simple (Score:5, Informative)
Windows: Microsoft Security Essentials, free if you have Microsoft Windows XP or higher, and it does work especially for the technical, not too adventerous link clicker. Gives you that extra layer of protection you seem to want for those 'oh shit' moments.
Re:Simple (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
I can third this, but I'm wondering where the antitrust lawsuit is... I think MS were tiptoeing around it by making MSE a separate download, but as soon as they start bundling it with the OS it has antitrust written all over it...
Re: (Score:3)
They were sued out for internet explorer because they were using anti-competitive practices to stifle the entire internet ecosystem. MSE is only for Windows and can only be for Windows so Microsoft making it might as well have it considered a part of the OS since it is only there to solve the problem of bad user privileges that have plagued Windows for 20 years.
Re: (Score:3)
1. Antivirus should be part of the operating system. It is a critical aspect of a stable system.
2. Nobody cares about Microsoft anymore, they are loosing so much market share to Apple etc. Microsoft have good grounds to say 'not a monopoly'
3. Antivirus is an industry that has peaked - not a growing, sexy industry like the dotcom was.
4. (Conspiracy warning) Prior to viruses having economic benefit in themselves as botnets and
Re:Simple (Score:5, Informative)
Not only is it a reasonably good anti-malware tool, its the least intrusive one I've ever used, both as far as annoying popups and abusing system resources. My first download on any new Windows install.
Re: (Score:3)
Not only is it a reasonably good anti-malware tool, its the least intrusive one I've ever used, both as far as annoying popups and abusing system resources. My first download on any new Windows install.
Yup, I recently switched all my Windows boxes to MSE from AVG, as AVG started giving me fits after the v.11 update.
Have yet to find a reason to switch again.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Simple (Score:5, Informative)
Yep.. I'm a big-ol M$ hater, and I can say that MSSE is a pretty decent product.. FIrst thing I put on everyone else's computer after I fail to convince them to run Linux..
Re: (Score:3)
Second this. It's the best thing I've ever seen from Redmond. If all their software worked like this their suckometer would read a hell of a lot lower.
Re:Simple (Score:4, Insightful)
Second this. It's the best thing I've ever seen from Redmond. If all their software worked like this their suckometer would read a hell of a lot lower.
If their other software (read: Windows) worked like 'this', then 'this' wouldn't be needed in the first place. /smirk
Re: (Score:2)
[1]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well then you obviously don't have any mid to large size archives on your disk. MSE chokes and uses tons of CPU ( a known issue, supposedly "has gotten better" , not that you would notice a whole lot... ) on rar / or zip files and sometimes cab files when it scans random files in the background and lands on the archive. I've had it choke off a dual core 3.2Ghz processor so bad I thought I was back on a 486DX again with the program load / wait times.
That said it SEEMS to do a decent job, either that or I'm
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Simple (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Simple (Score:4, Informative)
MSE is not free: it is free for home users. Business may use only up to ten free licenses before they are required to upgrade to Forefront. If you're a business and using more than ten copies of MSE, you're breaching the license agreement.
Source: the MSE download page [microsoft.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Cost of the eleventh machine (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, either you got lucky or I, and lots of other people, pack our archives oddly. There was either a KB article or a dev blog at MS about mspeng.exe ( thats the scanner process ) chewing the crap out of your CPU. That was what the claim was anyways, that it was doing a random scan in a large archive.
I do have some rather large archives, as well as some huge files( think 50-80GB+ backup disk clones ). It has gotten better recently, but I still do get infrequent spike where mspeng.exe just sits and chews
Re: (Score:2)
Another advantage (Score:3, Informative)
Is that it updates itself via Windows update. So should it fail to get a virus database update internally, Windows update will fix it. If there's a new version, Windows update will get it. Very good for people who just don't want to mind after the program.
That said, I think there are pay for solutions that are better (NOD32 is what I like) but if you want free, it works great.
Re: (Score:2)
Is that it updates itself via Windows update. So should it fail to get a virus database update internally, Windows update will fix it.
Actually, I believe MSSE only auto-updates via its own, internal mechanism. Virus databases do also show up in Windows Update, but they're always marked "optional," and they will go away once MSSE downloads that update itself. You can choose to apply the updates manually via Windows Update, though.
Re: (Score:2)
Wait, you have people that actually accept the Windows Updates? Everyone I know just closes the pop-up, and when I show up (virus / malware, or running really slowly) I see "926923798257 updates to install" (yes, I'm exaggerating).
Actually, you probably don't have to exaggerate too much on that. On a number of occasions, when rebooting after installing updates I've been greeted by a screen saying something like "Installing update 1 of 12000". First time I saw that I was in shock, but then it only took 30 seconds or so to zip through it all. Not sure what was going on, but I suspect it was checking thousands of registry keys and counted each one as an update for some reason. Thankfully they don't each get their own entry in the update
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Simple (Score:4, Insightful)
I downloaded and executed a program called windows web commander while running MSE. It gave me no warning. I had to restore the computer to a date before downloading to get it to work again. It started with a pop up message stating I had a virus. The program asked for money to remove the virus which was essentially itself.
Even the best code can't fix stupid...
NO anti-virus/anti-malware/anti-rootkit/etc gets them all. AV is run as an early warning system. If something slips past, you either restore from backup or scan with another tool and hope it finds whatever got past the first tool.
Re: (Score:2)
Just adding my voice to this - I use MS because it doesn't do any of the annoying crap that other free AVs I've tried do. No sudden 100% CPU usage for 20 minutes, no pop-up adds. My only slight gripe is that it seems to do a brief scan on startup, which slows down your startup time (time taken from booting up until your HDD stops chewing), and I can't see a way to turn this off. But all AVs I've tried do the same thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, it has one of the smallest memory footprints (under 50 Mb) and you can turn it off (believe it or not, some AVs can't be turned off except by uninstalling).
Best AV is almost as good as nothing at all (Score:5, Informative)
The only thing AV provides is a false sense of security. With AV, you're waiting until AFTER an infection occurs and then HOPING the AV company you've chosen has A) seen the malware before, B) bothered to add a signature to their definitions list, and C) is actually capable of removing the virus.
Better ideas: Turning on AppLocker & running most of the time as an unprivileged user. Check out OSSEC for use as a File Integrity Monitor and Host-based Intrusion Detection System. Disable unnecessary services, remove unnecessary programs, use an ad-blocker, a "default deny all" firewall policy and get a 3rd party patch manager to keep all your non-MS bits up to date. Secunia PSI is a free patch manager/vuln scanner for home use - there are others.
For a detailed description of just how bad AV is at protecting systems, check out the following blog post at computer-forensics.sans.org:
http://computer-forensics.sans.org/blog/2012/04/09/is-anti-virus-really-dead-a-real-world-simulation-created-for-forensic-data-yields-surprising-results [sans.org]
Re: (Score:2)
The only thing AV provides is a false sense of security. With AV, you're waiting until AFTER an infection occurs and then HOPING the AV company you've chosen has A) seen the malware before, B) bothered to add a signature to their definitions list, and C) is actually capable of removing the virus.
Not quite (although maybe true years ago).
Firstly, unless you have done a VERY poor job of installing it, the AV will scan files BEFORE it will allow them to run, not wait until you've run them and then try to clear up the mess. I think you may be getting mixed up with disinfection tools (which often come bundled with AV). These are used post-infection to clean up, but I haven't encountered anyone who has relied on these alone.
Secondly, nearly EVERY AV product I have seen and used in the past decade (e
Re: (Score:2)
Non-intrusive? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Simple (Score:5, Informative)
+1.
I've had MSE detect & clean that one of the other free products (think it might have been Avast?) didn't catch - and MSE is no-nonsense, doesn't get in your way, haven't given me false positives (it does flag stuff like keygens though :)), and isn't too hard on system resources.
Combine that with FireFox + AdBlockPlus + NoScript + Ghostery + Certificate Patrol and some common sense, and you should be pretty well off.
Re:Simple (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Ah yes, forgot to list that one in the bunch - EMET is nice indeed! It's not a failsafe security guarantee, but it does add a nice extra bit of security. Do be sure to test configuration before rolling out corporate-wide, as some software is incompatible with some of the mitigations :)
Oh, and one more (and perhaps obvious) thing: disable Flash, Java and Adobe-PDF in your main browser, as those are the main attack vectors these days. Have a secondary browser/profile for the times you need any of these. Use a
Re: (Score:2)
Noscript (Score:2)
I use Noscript (and Ubuntu) too, but I wonder if it is worth it.
Anyway, is there a known-good whitelist I can download?
Re: (Score:2)
It's a bit bothersome indeed, and you risk ending up whitelisting too much on some sites, as it can be slightly difficult figuring out exactly what you need to whitelist - but IMHO it's worth it. And even if you whitelist a bit too much on a site you're purposely trying to get working, you'll probably still be blocking eventual drive-by nasties on other sites.
AdBlockPlus wasn't just mentioned for convenience, btw, but because compromised banner servers is an ideal way to deliver malware - if a legitimate ba
I would feel gulty to adblock (Score:2)
Please see http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3140615&cid=41442941 [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:2)
A decent point, I guess. I'd still go with AdBlockPlus, though, but whitelisting the sites that are worth it - even though you don't get "full protection", at least it helps reducing the risk of random drive-bys on random sites. And as long as you don't have flash, java or the pdf plugin, you're a long way towards safety.
Re: (Score:2)
I leave the flash plugin disabled, and only enable it for youtube videos that don't work with HTML5 (unless I use youtube-dl).
I never used PDF plugins; I think it is much better to open PDF files with a dedicated viewer (in my case, evince).
I recently disabled Java because of the 0day shenanigans and I only enable it for one (trusted) site that needs it.
By the way, I have realized that I care a lot about computer s
Re:Simple (Score:5, Informative)
I can second this. I've taken to using the MSE offering for family that are on Windows. Two simple reasons. I can flat out tell them to ignore any web prompts for 'free virus scans' and whatnot. Ignore any prompts to purchase virus scan 'updates', etc,
It also removes the irritating ad-ware that Avast and AVG are pushing out lately. They are doing more and more prompts to 'upgrade' which is confusing to older family members. Considering you're a techy this is probably a non-issue, but I do find comfort in the fact that the MS offering isn't likely to quarantine key OS files as Avast and AVG have done multiple times over the last few years.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I've always had an issue of trust with MSE ... the reason to run AV software is I don't trust Microsoft to write a secure OS.
Trusting them to write the AV software has always seemed like quite a leap for me -- if you can spot them, fix the damned OS.
Granted, I've heard people say really nice things about it. But it has always sounded like asking the security guard who keeps leaving the door unlocked to check if the door is unlocked.
Re:Simple (Score:5, Interesting)
Not the same thing IMO. A great amount of malware requires that the user does something. So "download our .exe and ignore the security prompts!" is still a very large section of things, and has nothing to do with a secure OS or not. Programs running as a user has as many rights as a user themselves. That's what most virus software is for: detecting that you're trying to run something that's "bad" but it's not exploiting security holes to do so. It's just running with "full trust" just like any other program on your machine, and behaving badly.
Re: (Score:3)
Not all malware uses security vulnerabilities to do its thing. And MS security is pretty good these days. Don't let the past blind you to the best free AV for Windows.
Re: (Score:3)
It's a long past to get over. :-P
But I have been seriously considering switching to MSE for quite some time now -- AVG has been really getting more annoying with each release.
But that doesn't mean that it's easy to say "oh, it's Microsoft, they must know lots about security" since for a lot of years they clearly knew nothing at all about it.
Re: (Score:3)
It is a long past.
AND
I really fucking hate MS.
I manage about 25 XP Pro machines at work. I have them all moved to MSE.
Easy, fast, works.
Re: (Score:3)
Not only off-topic, you are also bad at trolling. Also I wonder how "families" can understand technology as a group; how do you aggregate individual expertise? Is the family understanding based on the highest, lowest, average or median understanding of individuals? And does "family" apply only to parents and children living under the same roof, or only to those sharing a computer? You need to provide more details about your deep analysis of how Linux solves the problem of choosing a free antivirus.
Re: (Score:2)
I would have agreed 2 years ago the 10.04 netbook release was near perfect for non technical users. Unfortunately it got abandoned and they concentrated on unity.
Just what is wrong with providing a list of programs logically grouped. Just type the name, you jest.
I've used Linux for years and i am still not 100% on the names of the programs I use.
The 12.04 gnome classic is a joke. I just had to explain alternative ways to close programs since firefox for example when maximised loses the close X from the wind
Re: (Score:2)
Just use Kubuntu (or install KDE packages on regular Ubuntu).
Re: (Score:2)
Kde isn't the worst, but i have an old dislike for it, going back to suse. That was 6 or 7 years ago but there are very nice kde apps. If mint becomes annoying i may well switch again.
Ubuntu was pretty good but they seem to have lost their way which is a pity since it was great, the unity interface just doesn't work for me or my systems.
Re: (Score:2)
KDE greatly improved since the infamous 4.0 switch. I run KDE 4.9.1 (from ppa, regular Ubuntu packages are somewhere at 4.8.x), and it's perfectly usable. I have changed the layout to the GNOME-ish two panels, replaced fancy menu with traditional one, moved applets around and configured compiz as a window manager. compiz did not start properly in 4.8.x, I had to include it in startup, so first kwin started, then compiz replaced it, however in 4.9.1 just selecting compiz as a window manager works without any
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed. MSE is the the only free antivirus worth anything. The rest are being monetized and try to trick you into buying the paid ones, if they don't just plain suck. Also the only one I don't feel is slowing down my computer. Before MSE, I just didn't use any, the AV was worse than the rare virus infection.
I had Avast on one computer a while ago. That was actually quite unobtrusive. That or MSE would be my choice.
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed. MSE is the the only free antivirus worth anything. The rest are being monetized and try to trick you into buying the paid ones, if they don't just plain suck. Also the only one I don't feel is slowing down my computer. Before MSE, I just didn't use any, the AV was worse than the rare virus infection.
I had Avast on one computer a while ago. That was actually quite unobtrusive. That or MSE would be my choice.
I dropped Avast when I started getting pop ups advertising Avast for Android, Avast for Mac, etc.
They used to be pretty good. Then it the destination was Spam City aboard the Bloatware Express, with stops at the Upsell Station every year.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed.
It should be pointed out though, Antivirus will have nothing to do with preserving the liftime of your PC. A virus (usually) can't damage the PC, it might destroy the data on it, but you can just reinstall in a worst case scenario.
* There have been some viruses in the ancient past that could damage a PC, such as forcing the hard drive to bash it's heads against the parking zone, or writing to some bizarre register in the bios that could cause some kind of hardware damage, but 99.99999% of viruses to
Re:Simple (Score:4, Insightful)
> A virus (usually) can't damage the PC, it might destroy the data on it, but you can just reinstall in
> a worst case scenario.
In the very narrow realm of "Physical Damage to your PC", you are absolutely correct. There are some, at least theoretical, exceptions.... CRT monitors that could be put into damaging modes... excessive constant drive access could decrease its lifetime.... some flash technologies have limite dwrites.... meh.... no big deal.
That said, damage to my pc doesn't even enter into my "worst case scenario" when it comes to this sort of compromise.
My worst case involves things like, I connect to work from home and they steal my credentials (of course 2 factor auth helps but, even without my token they can still get in when I connect). Install a keylogger on the box and get my banking passwords and clean out my accounts.
but hey, having to fix my pc...that would suck
Re: (Score:2)
I was responding to the question askers comment about wanting "to make sure that my recent investment in an Acer laptop will last me a good long while"
Virus software will not prolong the lifetime of your laptop.
Re: (Score:2)
The BBC Micro User Guide had a sentence early on saying (paraphrase) "Feel free to experiment, there's nothing you can damage that can't be fixed by power-cycling".
But: ... would burn out the cassette relay if you left it running for a couple of minutes.
10 *MOTOR 1
20 *MOTOR 0
30 GOTO 10
I'm sure there are equivalents on a modern PC.
Re: (Score:3)
It should be pointed out though, Antivirus will have nothing to do with preserving the liftime of your PC.
You'd be surprised. I've known people who get a computer, use it until it's so bogged down with crap and viruses that it's unusable*, then toss it out and get a new one. They have no conception of what a recovery disk/partition is. At all. Software and hardware are all part of the magic box and they have no interest in differentiating.
(* For these people, half an hour boot time is merely "slow". Unusable means "won't boot".)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm aware of such people. But my point still stands. Just because YOU don't think you like it anymore, doesn't mean the computers life is over.
Re: (Score:3)
One that immediately springs to mind is Medusa. I lost a machine to this in 1999(?): the thing wrote itself to the BIOS and killed the system dead. I managed to save everything else, but a new mainboard was required as I couldn't simply reflash the thing.
Re: (Score:3)
Seconded, MSE works just great, without any hassle. The other product that I use is Panda Cloud Antivirus. It does occasionally try to persuade you to buy the full version, but otherwise it just works, and it is lighter on the CPU than MSE. I used to be a bit fan of Avira Antivirus, but it got too annoying, and had too many false positives for comfort.
Re:Simple (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Step 1 - Open Internet Control Panel
Step 2 - Set homepage to about:blank
Step 3 - Open IE
Step 4 - Navigate to ninite.com
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I find the free MS product excellent, unobtrusive and very very effective. I have way less issues then anyone I know with norton....
Norton installed crap on my NIC driver once. Took me two days to spot it - thought I had a mobo failure. I uninstalled Norton immediately I spotted it, and haven't bought one of their products since.
Re:Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
Peter Norton should sue Symantec for defamation of character.
The original Norton Utilities were lean, mean must-haves. Anything called "Norton" nowadays is a steaming pile of shit that you run away from as fast as you can.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Nix on that one. MS security essentials is the only anti-virus that did more damage than an actual Virus. With default settings, SE took it upon itself to delete an entire e-mail folder in thunderbird, silently and with no warning, because of a simple e-mail virus. Not quarantine, mind you, just outright delete.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
FWIW, if the default behaviour upon discovery of an infection is to delete the file, and you have enabled scanning within archives, any anti-virus software would have done the same thing.
Re: (Score:2)
I should have been more clear. In Thunderbird a mail 'folder' is a single maidir file.
Re: (Score:2)
Windows non-server versions.
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting.
Last time I installed it on a server OS, it refused and told me to go buy ForeFront.
I would not recommend it. (Score:3)
It is free and easy to use. It also seems to be easier on the resources than some other tools. However I have had it miss things that other programs found (and they were NOT false positives). I know of other people that have experienced this problem as well. I recently looked through some antivirus comparisons and MSSE really fell short on a few of those tests. If I remember correctly, one of these tests had MSSE fail to detect about 14%. I would look for other software.
--
If a person gives their two cents o
Re: (Score:2)
That's true of every AV product in existence. None of them catch everything. Other people have seen MSE catch things that the others miss, and in other cases MSE misses stuff the others find.
The question is always that risk as compared to the cost of the AV. In the case of something like Norton, the AV itself is worse then most viruses for computer usability.
Re: (Score:2)
Then would this be the relevant XKCD? http://xkcd.com/937/ [xkcd.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Another vote for MSE. My only problem is it takes forever to run a full scan compared to other apps. I bet a full scan takes 3-4+ hours on my system. But, I always try to have at least 2 anti-virus apps installed and let them run a different times late at night.
Re:Simple (Score:4, Funny)
Uh oh, sounds like you might have an infection that's sapping your performance. Might need to get a third antivirus program and install it alongside the other two. Make sure you leave realtime scanning on so that all three of them get a good look at every file that the system is opening and closing behind the scenes. Surely one of them can identify the rogue files.
Good luck!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
FWIW, Ive heard noise that Avast 2012 is faster and more accurate. Just downloaded it on my laptop, not sure if I notice any difference over MSSE / Forefront.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
MSE has always been good for me on Windows systems with one exception:
On my Windows 7 VM on my work laptop (a Mac) it chokes badly whenever it tries to perform a full scan. Even set to use minimal CPU, it somehow still seems to clog the complete system (I assume it's method for determining CPU usage doesn't work nicely under that VM scenario).
Since I'm using the VMWare option to "share" folders so my desktop, documents, etc are virtual locations shared from the real Mac folders, the scan attempts to go thr
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm running Fusion 5.0.1 with the same setup (only 57.6 gig on the desktop tho) on a laptop, so 2.5' platter drive. Not seeing that CPU issue but getting lots of slowdowns when both OSes hit the drive at the same time. If you install MenuMeters it will be invaluable in seeing what your mac is doing when it grinds to a halt and at least give you a fighting chance to diagnose the problem.
Oddly, I don't find simultaneous access to be much of a problem. This is also a 2.5" inch drive of course; being in my MacBook Pro.
I hadn't heard of MenuMeters - it looks useful for quick "at a glance" overviews of the system; however for this particular case, I already took a look at what it's doing using top on the command-line and only saw that (as somewhat expected by the performance) VMWare was using an excessive amout of CPU and there was a lot of disk activity in general.
Just as a test, I tried it o
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Simple (Score:4, Informative)
My only qualm with MSE: My mother-in-law (and my wife's sister, who lived with the m-i-l) managed to impressively infect a Windows XP system that I had MSE installed on.
So far as I could tell, something broke Windows updates, which in turn meant that MSE updates didn't flow, and the infestation ran wild... to the point that the computer was unusable.
In my work experience, it's easy for Windows updates to break or be broken. It was nonfunctional on my work computer for the better part of a year before I reloaded it.
This experience led me to believe that antivirus should have its own, hardened, secure, simple update path independent of Windows system management technologies.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
MSE? Doesn't work well in my experience! (Score:2)
MSE? have you ever done any back to back trials?
I used to recommend MSE, however after it not finding something when I KNEW there was a virus, only avira was able to find it and remove it.
Ever since then, I have swore by avira. However you do have to jump through hoops to get it working though, such as having to blacklist avnotify.exe in secpol so you don't see avira ads. Annoying, and why it makes it difficult to recomend to anyone who is not comfortable with editing windows security policies.
This is a ver
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I wouldn't recommend it; every time I see MSE on a client's PC, it has the attention icon because manual intervention is required for it to update, and it does not seem to prompt users unless they notice the icon change in the notification bar and prompt an update manually.
Want a decent free antivirus? Get Comodo Internet Security which I have found to be extremely effective,or Immunet (free version) and enable the ClamAV definitions.
Aside from requiring the user to be observant and proactive, MSE started o
Re:Simple - Get Avira free (Score:2)
Check out www.virusbtn.com for their VB100 comparison of antivirus solutions. Avira free comes out ahead of the majority of the best known commercial offerings.