The best value anti virus software.

Pat494

Pat494

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I have issues with my present software company called Reimage. When I run their scan it removes the clutter PLUS programmes that I want to keep. Well that's not acceptable. Although I have been in touch they are reluctant to do anything useful.
I have tried Avast and found that wanting too.

Can anyone suggest a good quality one that is not too expensive please ?
 
haven't had any issues with using the free stuff to keep things ship shape

I generally use in combo -
windows defender
spyhunter
ccleaner
 
There is a new virus that's going around that targets adblocker on chrome causing chrome to stop working. Just an FYI
 
Here are my suggestions:
For a domestic setup with only known trusted users free software is perfectly adequate (other circumstances will require different consideration). Many of the antivirus free offerings are very good – the free ones tend to be of EOD type i.e. you run them as required. Real-time monitoring usually requires real-time money but provided you are not a frequenter of dodgy downloads/links it's not a problem. These should always be used in conjunction with a firewall; despite the antipathy towards Bill Gates the latest Windows firewall is perfectly satisfactory and it's also likely that your router will have a firewall in addition.

I've always found registry cleaners to be rather troublesome in that they will often clean out files that later affect your PCs operation – not seriously but irritatingly so. When using them you need to be very careful in telling them what can/cannot be got rid of. Much of the "rubbish" that they do clean out is not actually very harmful and if you have a reasonably powerful PC with plenty of memory that is only used for mundane tasks you probably won't notice any performance deterioration if they remain in place.

AVG – used to use this in the past, had a nice simple interface but subsequent "improvements" started to impinge adversely other software.
CC cleaner – perfectly good cleanup software but keep it on a short lead otherwise it will get rid of all sorts of stuff that you don't want to get rid of.

Currently I use:
Antivirus – Malwarebytes. This is really an excellent piece of software which is free for EOD use and if you need real-time monitoring is very reasonably priced. This company also provide a suite of other free products including root kit detectors set and suchlike, as well as a useful application called "Chameleon" which is pretty good at outwitting a virus that tries to shut down your anti-virus software.

Windows – bog standard Windows firewall in addition to Windows defender which also is a decent real-time antivirus program (there are plenty of geek reviews that "prove" its not as good as others but for everyday use it's worked okay for me). My router also has an inbuilt firewall. I also run an anti-tracking program (free) called Ghostery which again will surprise you at how many sites track you, if you are unfamiliar with this sort of thing.

My practice: I run Malwarebytes once a week. I also run Malwarebytes on any downloaded file before opening it (Windows does an automatic security scan anyway). I run Windows defender scan once a week as well. I only allow cookies from sites that I use regularly and trust – in theory cookies should not be a problem but if you set your browser to warn you when cookies are deposited, you will be surprised at how many are loaded if you are unfamiliar with this sort of thing. The important thing is to do your scans regularly – put it on your Outlook calendar!

With the above practice in principle (necessarily using different products over the years) I have had absolutely no trouble with viruses etc. or the PC clogging up since getting my 1st PC in the 1980s. But I am very careful not to click on unknown/dodgy links or to download from untrusted sources. The main thing to take on board is that the average domestic user does not have to spend any extra money to be decently protected.

Note that I am only talking Windows: Mac users are a different breed and will tell you that they are much more virus resistant. I've never been totally convinced by this argument but I'm not a Mac user or terribly familiar with them so I'll keep my head down! LINUX and other sophisticated users will no doubt be savvy enough to make their own adequate arrangements.

Not directly connected with this, I use another very useful piece of software called "Revo Uninstaller". When uninstalling software it 1st uses the Windows program to uninstall – the problem with this is that many software applications when uninstalling via Windows (which uses the installed application's routines to effect uninstall) leave a load of stuff on your computer which continues to work in the background: if you have you ever tried getting rid of some of the Apple stuff in this way you will know what I'm talking about. The useful thing about Revo is that it then goes on to remove all this remaining stuff and does a deep scan of the registry so that all registry entries can be removed. I have found in the past that this is sometimes the only way of completely getting rid of an installation. It's a good piece of kit and the basic version is free.

You can find all this software by googling. My recommendation is to download it from the actual provider's site: there are lots of other sources which offer to download it for you but if you're not very careful and omit to tick the odd box here and there, you usually end up with loads of other (mostly harmless but irritating) stuff that you didn't want – like extra toolbars and links to sites offering to flog you something. So be careful, unless you want loads of practice with your Revo uninstaller!
 
Last edited:
dbphoenix said:
For virus, look at AVG. For cleaning your registry and disk, look at Wise. All free.
Click to expand...

Installed AVG.
Thanks . Looks good.
Can I ask if the free repair bit can be reversed if it removes important programs ?
Before I try it. The last one removed my MT4 prog but fortunately I could reverse it.
 
Pat494 said:
Installed AVG.
Thanks . Looks good.
Can I ask if the free repair bit can be reversed if it removes important programs ?
Before I try it. The last one removed my MT4 prog but fortunately I could reverse it.
Click to expand...

Can't say, but I've never had any problem with it. OTOH, I don't have tons of programs on my computer. Wise should tell you if reversal is possible.
 
Hello,

I recommend Sophos AV Home edition - It's free & whats more can be managed in a cloud based portal, so you can protect friends and family computers (if you wanted to burden yourself with that :D
 
movefast said:
Hello,

I recommend Sophos AV Home edition - It's free & whats more can be managed in a cloud based portal, so you can protect friends and family computers (if you wanted to burden yourself with that :D
Click to expand...

Sophos have always had a very good reputation.
 
I agree - I wasn't referring to Sophos being the burden, more the admin of friends & family machines.. You get the call every time from then on :) It does have helpful email notifications also.

They also do a free home version of their firewall - which is also excellent, full VPN, Firewall, Web proxy and reverse proxy, should you host your own personal websites.
 
movefast said:
I agree - I wasn't referring to Sophos being the burden, more the admin of friends & family machines.. You get the call every time from then on :) It does have helpful email notifications also.

They also do a free home version of their firewall - which is also excellent, full VPN, Firewall, Web proxy and reverse proxy, should you host your own personal websites.
Click to expand...

Apologies if I gave the wrong impression; I totally backup what you originally said. :)
 
sminicooper, no worries - I just thought it was my as per usual badly written posts. I often look back at posts and wonder how the hell anyone was to derive anything from them :)
 
Pat494 said:
I have issues with my present software company called Reimage. When I run their scan it removes the clutter PLUS programmes that I want to keep. Well that's not acceptable. Although I have been in touch they are reluctant to do anything useful.
I have tried Avast and found that wanting too.

Can anyone suggest a good quality one that is not too expensive please ?
Click to expand...

I suggest to you 1st you can download the trail packs for top 10 Anti-virus and check which is best.

After that you can buy the best antivirus as per your requirement
 
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