Free Anti-virus software for Windows? Recommendations please

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I've got the free version of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware on my computer which I run occasionally doing a full scan and it always comes up clean. Similarly I've used AVG for many years and that never gives me any virus warnings either. My computer seems to be clean and virus free and shows no signs of any infection or malware. However, the other day I decided to switch to a different free anti-virus. I uninstalled AVG and installed:

Avast
What a pile of poo! Bear in mind I've only got dial-up internet as I live out in the sticks and Avast pretty much monopolised my connection doing god knows what for a couple of days. I did a full scan which came up clean; similarly a boot level scan which took several hours, also showing a clean computer. However, when I tried using my computer, it kept throwing lots of my exe files into the virus vault - it first said it hadn't seen the exe's before so was checking them - it finally said OK no malware found in them, do I really want to run them - Well yes! I'm a developer, all the exe's it was picking on were one's I'd written myself for my own use, so no wonder it hadn't come across them before. I could live with telling Avast to allow these programs to run but the deal-breaker came with one of my more useful programs. It claimed it had a nasty virus. Doubtful since I wrote the program myself and it has been on my computer for a year or two without complaint from previous anti-virus software. I did a Google check on the virus (forgot its name now) and no way was my computer infected as the effects of the virus are blatant with lots of adverts popping up and diverted web searches etc. However, just to be on the safe side I deleted my exe and it's object code and recompiled it from source code - Avast was in there again - killing my freshly compiled exe. I clicked a button saying to add the program to the "Allowed list" but the feature didn't work. I tried several times but Avast kept giving the same false positive and prevented me from working - so I uninstalled Avast. Pile of poo!

Avira
This comes with its own crappy installer program. With dial-up internet the Avira installer window said download would take around 6 hours to download the 110 MB. So I left it downloading overnight. The following morning the progress bar was showing 100% complete but the amount of data left to download was showing in the region of 14 Gigabytes! Expected download time remaining - several months! WTF! I cancelled the Avira installation and tried it again last night. Same result. So I can't even install Avira, there is something flaky about its installer program. My guess is that it doesn't like interrupted downloads - my ISP drops my internet connection after every 8 hours, but the computer automatically redials. Looks like the crappy installer program can't handle this. I prefer to download full versions of software via Free Download Manager which handles broken downloads perfectly but Avira doesn't give the choice. It is their crappy downloader or nothing. So Avira is a non-starter.

What free anti-virus to try next? I'm not having much luck so far.
I'm beginning to think I was better off with AVG despite my dislike of recent "improvements" to it which prompted me to uninstall it in the first place.

You could try the free version of Comodo

Thanks for the suggestion. I've just read some reviews of it but it doesn't sound very promising. Apparently it sandboxes and gives alerts for any exe's that are unknown to it. Since most of the software I use is written by me, it sounds like it would give me a lot of grief. I may give it a try though if no better suggestions come forward. If Comodo only asks once for each of my own programs and subsequently allows them to run unhindered it might be OK. It would be extremely annoying if it pounces on every fresh compile of a program though while it is under development.

"microsoft security essentials" is what i use, although, since having typed that, i have read a negative review about it.

"microsoft security essentials" is what my bank advised me to use when i was paranoid about having so much money in the bank, but since i have used that money to buy a house, i am not as paranoid, but nevertheless i have had no problems in any way with malware whilst using "microsoft security essentials".
however i never look at porn sites or enter gambling sites or many other popular sites (like celebrity gossip sites).

it is the baggage that you attract from having wandered into questionable realms of inquiry that follows you home. like "farmers friends" on the trouser legs of farmers who have traipsed the seedy areas in their back paddocks "out of curiosity".

i am almost never troubled by external interruption or influence pertaining to my internet experience. i guess if you surf where there are no waves, then you will not attract an audience.

p.s: those amber colored glasses you wear make you look 9.7% jaundiced.

I read some reviews of it yesterday. Apparently it recently failed some sort of certification testing by not detecting enough viruses when compared to other anti-virus software. One other thing that puts me off Microsoft security essentials was its licence agreement which stated that part of its inherent functionality is to automatically report back to Microsoft about files on your computer that it doesn't recognise! - I consider that spyware rather than anti-virus software. While arguments could be made in favour of such behaviour, it is a little too big-brother for my comfort; I value my privacy.

Several people I know use the free version of Malwarebytes and are very happy with it - you've probably already got the "best of breed" for the free ones right there.

TBH I think the idea of Microsoft checking its own software for malware is something of an oxymoron...
That, and the inevitable Big Brother spyware activities.

well what do you have to hide?




but spyware (if it is innocuous) is essential to the formulation of more sophisticated applications that are tailor made to analyze the tactics of malicious software design, and as such, provide the data to formulate an antithetic routine that says "no" before malignantly decremental questions ever reach our internal ears. i really do not care much to be honest.

Custom software and data for myself and several of my clients, confidential databases with names, addresses, contact details, financial details and credit ratings and other details of private individuals and thousands of organisations, some in custom formats that Microsoft would not recognise. I also keep my own personal banking information on my computer along with lots of other personal documents that include things like details of my birth certificate, driving licence, passport etc etc - again all held in custom designed software / encrypted databases. I do not trust any third parties with any of this data, nor with access to the source code of my software. My computer drives are also heavily encrypted (TrueCrypt) but it makes a mockery of the security if Microsoft or some other third party can just take copies of whatever they want when they want.

just acquire some multi terabyte drives and put all your stuff on them. then you can partition them to be shareable with others (with respect to the permissions you ascribe to each folder) .

I've got Malwarebytes. I've been happy with it for a number of years now. The only downside is that the free version doesn't give real-time monitoring. So while it is highly rated to remove virus infections it is no use to prevent them from happening in the first place.

I'm beginning to think that anti-virus software has about reached the end of the road in terms of its effectiveness. There are an ever increasing number of viruses, trojans and other malware out there and anti-virus software isn't perfect at keeping them at bay. False positives are also another pain in the rear. I once had my entire website blacklisted by McAfee as hosting malware but didn't know until one of my customers mentioned he couldn't download an update to my software. Further investigation with my web hosting company said my site was clean and after a lot of hassle talking to McAfee they changed my site rating to harmless - but gave no explanation or apology for their initial error, which hit my pocket and hurt me financially. Can't touch these "big boys" with lawsuits unless you've got deep pockets for expensive international lawyers; so they can cause harm with impunity.

From what I've read, the paid versions of anti-virus packages are little or no better at protection than the free versions; they simply have more bloat.

Maybe Comodo is the way to go... assume all software is malicious unless you tell it otherwise?

How about CLAM-AV?

What? You can't be serious.
Expecting a user to agree that a company can lift details of whatever files it chooses on their PC, without notification or audit trail, as a condition of providing an alleged protection which shouldn't be necessary in the first place is not acceptable. To put it lightly.

This has nothing whatever to do with having something to "hide".

Yep. Microsoft seems incapable of adequately securing its own software and those left to deal with it are swamped.
Looks like there is just too much of it now to easily handle.

True - Norton and McAfee are practically a parasite OS, with the most noticeable "benefit" being an intrusive presence and a slower machine.
And then there's the domineering activity, as with your own website.

Comodo might be workable provided it doesn't just rely on filenames to identify software, otherwise malicious modifications would sail straight through.

If you're running a the system for business purposes, it's a shame that you can't run something more secure such as a Linux distro, or one of the BSD variants. If the system in question is powerful enough, you could at least run a BSD/Linux system and then run Windows on an enterprise grade VM such as VMWare.

its not free, but i had positive experience with a program called StopZilla. Its only $10 a year.

It was able to remove a browser hijacker virus that malwarebytes couldn't. That said if i was going to go for security software and money was no issue I'd go for Kapersky everytime. It has anti phishing functionality and as far as I know doesnt have the associated performance slowdown of Norton or McAfee.

Off the top of my head it would have to use file hashes to identify files; but that isn't foolproof - if a file changes a single byte it would change the hash code; similarly if someone knew the hash algorithm they could easily spoof an exe to be a different (safe) exe by manipulating a byte sequence within it to generate the same hash code so a virus could appear to be a commonly used clean exe.
The only 100% way to identify a file is to compare the whole file, byte for byte with a known standard copy of the file; but that would be unworkable as the anti-virus software would have to download every executable file in existence for comparison purposes!