which anti-virus/anti-spyware do you recommend?

I have been using spybot and AVG, and a very serious trojan made it into my XP laptop and my parent's XP PC. I was able to zap the trojan with ClamWin, but the damage was so bad that I had to re-format the drive and start over. So I am not going to trust a windows machine to any of the free security software.

With a fresh install of XP the laptop starts up and gets on-line a whole lot quicker than it used to with all the crap that the wife put on it. Now I need to install some security software to prevent the crud that I had to suffer for the last couple of days.

Which one do you guys recommend?

I use Avast antivirus. The home edition is free and it scores good in most tests. It also doesn't use your whole system memory or processor power to run...

For spyware I use windows defender. I don't notice it doing something, so I guess it works fine...

I use Avira AntiVir, Windows Defender, SpyBot, AdAware, and Comodo Firewall.

If you need a free anti-virus Avast is good, but for a paid one I use BitDefender myself.

I also use Spysweeper and A-Squared for spyware/malware

You can get BitDefender AV for 29.95 for 3 PCs for 1 yr.
or Internet Security for 3 PCs for 49.95 for 1 yr.

personally all AV has there weak spots regardless, there will always be a virus of some sorts that will slip through, no AV is 100% effective.

when i used to have a paid for AV i used Synaptic Antivirus Corp Edition V10 (Same people that make Norton, only without the bloat and system ownage)

But atm i use AVG v8 (With link scanner disabled)

Anti-Virus: Avast
Malware: MalwareBytes
Spyware: Adaware

most things do there jobs, people always work under the assumption that free AV/Mailware/Spyware are all rubbish, i think this is rubbish, yes some are crap (Excuse my french) but there are a few that made some ripples in the water.

Magic Bullet for example was the first free antivirus to use a professional database, it was also the first AV to beable to scan NTFS drives from DOS.

Antivir was the first AV to allow scanning of remote drives, also if configured correctly it could even run the active protection on a remote drive aswell.

But i still say if you pay for it, get either Mcafee or Symantic AV Corp V10 (Or higher)

I run AVG with Spybot, but i give it a good thrashing with TrendMicro's online virus scan, Housecall every few weeks.

Funny, I have not seen anyone mention Kaspersky yet. Yes its expensive, but it works great. -I am running it.

i haven't mentioned it becuase i've never tried it, maybe when my av runs out i will try it next,

my bro was going to use it when his runs out as apperently it scored the best on the table for AV/Allinones

at one point i did use my own firewall, but i've lot the setup program, might re-write it with spyware scanning in it this time, might do, depends how board it get

I had my folks get McAffee. I live 1/2 hour's drive away and I don't have as much free time to help them resolve PC problems like I used to.

For my laptop, I'm trying out the free Avast! anti-virus. If I get intense malware on the laptop I can just blow everything away and start over in less than an hour.

I have Trend-micro on my machine at work. I've also heard that Kapersky is good. Norton is very effective, but it robs your machine of resources.

Thanks for all the responses.

superantispyware pro is by far one of the best programs for fighting spyware.. A really good tool to use is hitman pro.. which combines like 12 different programs in one to make a good scanner :D i like it

My company has a Kaspersky license and it works very well. Their previous releases have taken up a lot of system resources, but the newest release runs very nicely in the background, and a full scan doesn't tax your system as much as some would think. The workstation client is very customizable, in that you can be very hands-off or very hands-on with the administration of all of its services, and everything in between. They are one of the leaders as far as virus definition databases (they solved the 660 bit encryption worm, and their working on the new 1040 bit worm).

I'm currently using McAfee's Enterprise client, and it is even less taxing than Kaspersky. I use that in conjunction with SpyBot, Spyware Blaster, and AssassinSE and HijackThis! when it comes to higher level stuff.

My advice: anything but Norton/Symantec that meets your standards.

I used to use Comodo on my XP system. They might release the betas for vista. :D

recently my bro got a free copy of windows love careone V2.5, three licences for 2 years, so i installed it on my laptop to see if its anygood, sofar good, the only thing i hate it having to have automatic updates turned on to stop it moaning about it

I use Threatfire and Norton 360, no issues here :up:

yea, 99% of people will agree with me here,

no issues becuase norton bogs the machine soo much virus's don't have the chance to run J/K J/K

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Originally Posted by XcOM

yea, 99% of people will agree with me here,

no issues becuase norton bogs the machine soo much virus's don't have the chance to run J/K J/K

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Yeah, that's actually probably true, lol. Norton is so terrible that they should pay you to run it. Seriously.

I dont know where you guys get that from, On my rig Norton is way down the list on using resources, hell IE7 and iTunes both use a lot more than Norton does

even so, my system is still super fast :D

My mom bought Norton back when Win 98 was the newest OS and installed in on our computer. It ran through and bogged the machine down bad. Worked for about and week and then deleted or quarantined half of the registry files so they computer wouldn't even boot up. Had to re-install Win98. I e-mailed them about it and they swore up and down that there is no way it deleted or quarantined files the computer needed to run. That's the last time I've used Norton.

My uncle just got a new laptop (a nice one too) that came with Norton on it... Norton is such a pain in the ass, it won't let up with the notification windows and the computer gets extremely slow from time to time. He needs to let me clean out the crapola that comes installed on it one day.

I for one love Norton...if I didnt have it when my windows install crashed, I'd have lost all my stuff

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Originally Posted by SXRguyinMA

I for one love Norton...if I didnt have it when my windows install crashed, I'd have lost all my stuff

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That's the way it goes. For some people Norton:Antivirus::Vista:OS's.

Sometimes they will just outright mess you up. Sometimes they will be the best thing in the world. Sometimes they get fixed. Sometimes the best fix is to install something else...

yea, I'm running Norton 360 v2 now, its perfect, never any issues on my end. also, tech service is excellent if you end up needing to call or do an online chat with them, as I had to do to reinstall Norton after I reinstalled windows :up:

I have Kaspersky licensed version. There are many anti-virus softwares freely available on internet. Kaspersky is bit pricy but decent. It has high power of detecting the viruses.