Lightweight Anti virus

Can someone please recommend me a very good light weight anti virus program to be used on my notebook pc.

I used KIS 2010 trial and i didn't like it at all because the automatic rootkit scan wastes system resurces and no way to disable it.

 

Avira Free is lightweight and has a high detection rate.

 

Microsoft Security Essentials is very light and free. As long as you know safe computer usage habits it should be more than enough, I'd recommend using FireFox with AdBlockPlus, NoScript, and BetterPrivacy ove IE in terms of safety.

However, if you are going to be downloading or looking at questionable things whether purposefully or accidentally or are not exactly a PC power user with basic security know hows I would recommend something a bit better like Avira/Nod32/Kapersky, of course they will use more resources than MSE.

As an example I run Avira Personal on my desktop where I do all my downloading and stuff and run Microsoft Security Essentials on my laptop which is my college PC and only use it for word processing and web browsing.

P.S. I still recommend running FF with said add-ons on ALL systems.

 

2nd that...Avira works very well for me.

LINKY


Cin...

 

the best FREE antivirus is Avira Antivir, resource usage is is light.

the best paid antivirus is NOD32, it has the lightest resource usage amongst antivirus programs and the highest detection rate.

try the demo :

32 bit >>> http://download.eset.com/eval/win/eav/eav_nt32_enu.msi

64 Bit >>> http://download.eset.com/eval/win/eav/eav_nt64_enu.msi

 

imo nis2010 it even lighter than nod32 is right now. during a FULL scan it is using a mere 11mb of ram here!!!

 

Maximus was outed after being unbanned. LOL.
I am not very concern about the RAM usage. But it is indeed awesome with 11MB of RAM usage only. What I concern here will be the CPU usage(I know it is very light as well).
Anyway, Avira Antivir Personal 9 is the BEST and LIGHTEST AV and it is FREE!

 

Honest question:
When is that rootkit scan a problem?
... its your choice - but just asking.

 

RAM usage means nothing guys.... who cares about 11 MB or 20 MB or whatever..when you have at least 2 GB of RAM these days...

what really matters for performance is CPU usage

 

I think factorz won't be so stupid to ignore about the CPU usage part.
Start from NIS2009, NIS is getting stronger and faster.

 

NOD32 detection rates are actually average, don't spread misinformation. It's certainly not the highest detection rates.

It also has a very poor firewall if you intend on getting a suite.

 

NOD32 detections Are high, don't spread false information. Maybe not the highest (the highest ones have the most warnings/paranoid, and are meant for system admins to deal with)

Lightest 32bit free antivirus probably would be Threatfire, paid would be NOD32 or NAV2010.

 

you mean settings -> object scans / quick scans / full scans -> run mode -> additional -> untick rootkit scan?

 

Wow, seriously? Threatfire? Threatfire is terrible. If you want a heuristic AV supplement your best bet by far is Prevx. Prevx is heuristic only yet manages higher detection rates than many traditional anti virus programs. Anyone using Threatfire as a standalone AV is absolutely foolish. Your best bets are Avira or Avast.

As for NOD32's detection rates, see for yourself:

http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/avc_report23.pdf

NOD32 has average detection rates. They actually fall slightly below average compared to other products. As far as "the most warnings", NOD32 also is average for false positives. You are incorrect. You can do much better with free products or Norton for paid.

 

And where did you come up with this false conclusion? don't you read reviews? it's been known for years that NOD32 is the leader in detections / performance!

go figure

 

Actually, in this case, I would have to partially agree with thatdaveguy. He cited a very reputable independent antivirus-ranking group's August 2009 final results ( PDF link here).

In that, we can see that Norton AV scored marginally better than ESET NOD32 detection-rate-wise, NAV beat NOD32 on scanning bandwidth (more files scanned per second), NAV missed less samples than NOD32, but NOD32 got one fewer false positive.

Performance-wise, I found NIS09 to use less resources than ESS3, both RAM and CPU-usage-wise. I recently upgraded to NIS10, and found it to use even fewer resources than NIS09.

 

What do you mean to say?
That the AV's with the highest detection rates are only to be used by sysadmins?
Or that the highest detection settings in any particular AV are only to be used by sysadmins?
I don't agree with either premise.
And NOD32' detection rates are certainly not the highest; check AV-Comparatives or AV-Test.org for scores.

Back on topic; OP, I'd say Avira if you want the lightest (and are running on 512MB).
If you've got more than 1 GB memory, Avast and MSE are worth trying also.

 

There is other things to a "light antivir" than ram usage damn it.. no one has problems with ram nowadays.

 

Has anyone tried G Data?? On that report it beat every other Antivirus and has one of the lowest false positives.

 

G Data is a multi-engine AV. It generally has slightly higher detection rate than Avira but the heuristics part is much weaker than Avira. See http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/avc_report22.pdf for details.

G Data is resource hogging and the scanning speed is slower (common nature of multi-engine AV). Malware removal capability is below average.

 

Now, I should say Microsoft Security Essentials is the BEST AV currently.
I found it is better than Avira Antivir Personal 9.
Higher detection rate and low resources(about the same with AAP9) as well as very low false positive.

 

For some reason, MSE's process likes to use my cpu when its not even scanning or anything

 

Where do you get that Microsoft Security Essentials has even higher detection rate than Avira?

I'm currently sticking with Avira becuase I'm more confident on the team. Your anti-virus is to protect your futre not your past. A consistent superb detection record is a better indicator and this gives me much more trust on the team that it will still keep doing its excellent job and keep them on the topmost list.

Heuristics test results are the most impressive, having 10-20% higher than the second best competitor, with slightly higher false positives.

A bit more false positives are okay to me. You can always send the suspicious sample to AntiVir if you are in doubt. They respond quickly to your email request (about 1 day most of the time).

 

The AV-Test release in Aug some time ago.

NOD32:
malware on demand: 94.4% (Rank 19)
adware / spyware on demand: 94.7% (Rank 23)

Kaspersky:
malware on demand: 98.40% (Rank 9)
adware / spyware on demand: 98.30% (Rank 8)

Avira:
malware on demand: 99.8% (Rank 1)
adware / spyware on demand: 99.0% (Rank 4)


According to AV-comparatives recent tests, NOD32 shows weaknesses in detecting trojans/keyloggers/backdoors too. I'm concerned more on those malware. Unlike virus which intends to mess up your OS, they try very hard to hide themselves to steal your personal data, passwords, credit card numbers etc. they are a much more serious risk than virus.

 

You are comparing the crappy NIS to NOD32? heh..... enjoy a world full of viruses that your system will never tell you about! the last time I used Norton, or any of my friends did, all I got was viruses

 

NOD32 was perhaps THE best AV a few years back, but others have since caught up. That's not to say that NOD is not still in the top tier, just that there are others as good to choose from now in terms of protection and performance. I used NOD until a few months ago and it was one of the least intrusive AVs I've ever used. I switched to Avast (free) recently, simple because of a compatibility issue with Outpost firewall, and while it's a good AV the interface and implementation look decidedly amateur compared to NOD.

Avira's free version is also very good BUT the update servers for the free version are not reliable, which IMO lowers the security considerably (no protection against zero-day viruses if your AV can't update its signatires). It's an ongoing and well-documented problem that I've experienced first hand.

 

The competition is very intense in the antivirus (antimalware) market. G Data, Avira, Avast, Bitdefender, F-Secure, Trustport, Kaspersky are strong competitors to fight against.

Microsoft is catching up now (although there are still some distances from the world-top tier). Let's see how Microsoft perform in the coming 1-2 years.

Anti-virus today no longer relies on signature detection only. Generic detection / heuristics comes into play now. It won't be so bad even if you are three months behind updates (very worst, but well, just to illustrate the point). Tests show Avira would still be able to block about 6X-70% zero-day malware.

Our scenarios are actually much better than that. We should be able to update later in the day or next day even if we experience problems from the update servers.

You may consider paying Avira to support it if you think it's worth it.

 

I scanned an USB Flash Drive(with virus) using Avira and then MSE.
Avira didn't detect the virus while MSE did it.
In addition, MSE have very low false positive. While Avira have very high false positive even I don't care about the false positive(exclusion).

 

Honestly speaking MSE is really a great AV Quite light i suppose after a few scans it becomes more responsive if that's what you call it..