Best av combination?

[Ragnarhox]

What combination of software do you think is best to keep your comp virus free or what do some people use. Just interested cus im going to erase my harddrive and start new.

[WooT]

Well if your talkin FREE AD-aware se personal is good same with spybot S&D and AVG is good combo

[Ragnarhox]

Does anyone reccomend Spyware Blaster...I had it before but it seemed like Spybot did everything it did plus it was hard to tell if it was working at all.

[trayne]

well for a small setup, superadblocker/xptools and panda.

[wm_hunter]

"Small setup"? Panda has a decent scanner, but it is as system bloated as Norton!

Anyway, SpywareBlaster is a decent utillity. What it does is locks down internet explorer from visiting sites that have these kind of bad downloads. I have used it in the past, but generally I don't bother.

I would recommend FireFox over Internet Explorer anyway (see my guide) EDIT: The link in my signature is down I will fix it ASAP. Link must have changed

The best setup you can get, for totally free:

AVG (link in sig, but you can find it here)

Windows Defender link, click on "download it here"

Windows Defender is in the second beta, and it is by Microsoft. It has equal scanning engines to AdAware Spybot and others, and it has REAL TIME protection. It is also easier to use then the others. I recommend it to most people.


Now, if you need to go with a paid antivirus scanner... I really suggest Nod32. Norton, Kaspersky, Panda, McAfee are all good at scanning, but they are far too bloated and hog system resources (they are "pigs" so to speak). Nod32 is very lightweight, as much if not more then AVG, and it has great scanning as well as heritics ("guessing") scanning.

Any other utillity you looking for? I have listed some good anti-spyware and anti-viruses...

I recommend AVG over Nod32 as Nod32 is more advanced and costs 80 dollars. I was just listing it as an option = )

Remember: When something goes wrong, it is not the computers fault.. it is the person sitting in front of it. The best anti-malware program in the world is being smart. Don't open email attatchments. Don't visit shaddy sites in IE (just a few days back they released an exploit 1-2 days after Windows Update day), and don't open files from untrusted sources.

[trayne]

the newer package versions of panda are cut down and are accurate. norton promised they will fix everything before the new year but their promise seems a bit far fetched since all they've done is make it bigger with larger requirements. panda actually doesnt use alot of resources. its internet part does but he only wants an antivirus. panda uses slightly less than avg. if he wants realtime scanning, he can always get eTrust antivirus.

[Esuna]

I use spybot snd, Norton, and this one thing... something soft, i forgot because i had it uninstall a while ago.

[trayne]

the stopsign company has free ones too and they are actually more thoro than mcafee and norton with half the resource use. you could try that if you'd like

[wm_hunter]

Hmm, I heard StopSign was a rouge anti-malware program before... they may have changed.

[trayne]

it was originally a free antivirus antspyware programs from rouge developers of symantec, mcafee, trendmicro, kaspersky and ISS. seems as of october/early november they started charging. kid of a pity that they did. but if they need something thats just stable and nothing fancy, they can always get antivir and use bitdefenders free online scan once and awhile to get the junk out..or if they just want to spend like 20, they can get SAB since its a blocker and a scanner.