Best Free Antivirus

I’m terribly sorry about the delay with this post. I promised to post this as of two weeks ago, so unfortunately I have been delayed until now.

Introduction

I know, it’s frustrating. You hate reading. And, by now, you’ve probably tried everything under the sun to protect your system from the nasty critters that are funking up everyone’s PC including yours. Well, hopefully this is an end-all solution for you. It was for me…

Crap

To start, it’s important that you clean out all of the cache your Windows – based PC builds up over time. Every time you visit a webpage you download (potentially) megabytes of data which adds up to gigabytes and so on. Some or most of that data is stored as cache to prevent you from having to re-download that stuff later on, thus speeding up your day-to-day business of web surfing. Unfortunately, an end-result can be slower performance, and the hogging of HDD (Hard Drive) space.

To help clean up your system from all of this “crap” that builds up, I recommend Crap Cleaner (CCleaner) which can be downloaded at Piriform.com.

Virus & Trojans

As for actually protecting your computer, you need more than one form of Antivirus. My two favorites are currently two of the most popular free antivirus products out there. AVG, and Panda.

What you need to know about AVG is that there is more than one company using the name “AVG”. The second is that there is more than one type of product and/or service that AVG provides. The basic antivirus is free. It comes with a resident (a program that runs in the background keeping viruses from loading into memory and essentially restricts their movements. Kind-of like an anklet on a convict. AVG Free Antivirus is very popular because it doesn’t take an incredible amount of memory to use passively. Even scanning runs at a minimal pace, unless you turn the toggle up raising its “priority” devoting more resources to its scan.

The second form of antivirus is called Panda Cloud Antivirus, and it also, is free. Just like AVG’s version, there is a free, as well as a paid antivirus client. You shouldn’t need the pro version unless you run a company-owned machine, or you just want massive overkill for your computer. Remember the more you pay for, the more is running, and the less resources you have in the end.

Panda Cloud Antivirus uses cloud-computing. I won’t get into the long description, but it can be summed up by saying: Cloud computing is using more than one machine, computer, or server’s resources to produce results. Basically meaning Panda isn’t just running on your PC, it’s running on some odd million others. When one person gets a virus, every other client gets updated with new criteria for a similar threat. How? It uses a database accessed via internet. Not-to-say that Panda is useless while offline, but it is seriously limited in its capabilities while not connected to the internet.

(Inhale)

Now, running AVG Free Antivirus side-by-side with Panda Cloud Antivirus isn’t a problem unless they’re both scanning at the same time. You may end up with an access violation, or a resource issue. It’s best to scan with one at a time at first, and see how long it takes. Then, schedule regular scans leaving a good buffer of time between each client.

Spyware

Now we’re down to the easy stuff. I want to introduce you to one of my best finds ever. Spybot Search & Destroy. What Spybot does is, well, it gets rid of spybots! From experience, this tool can find most adware, spyware, trojans, trojan downloaders, and a host of other nasty products that do nothing but get in your way from having a good day.

Spybot can scan your computer before windows is allowed to load, giving it the ability to get rid of a lot of bugs that other products like AVG and Panda can miss, since they’re not designed to do that anyway. Spybot also allows you to closely examine your startup list, giving you updated and descriptive information on what each entry is, and what it does. You’d be surprised. Read all of the entries’ info. You’ll find some surprises.

It also includes a basic set of tools to turn off BHOs (browser helper objects) for Internet Explorer, getting rid of some of those pesky ads and toolbars, and a somewhat annoying registry checker. I’d recommend sticking with CCleaner though. If you don’t believe me,  try it once. You have to delete each registry entry manually. (click x 457 = FUNK)

Summary

So, there you have it. The best combo of antivirus; at least that I’ve found, and is free. If you find something better, post a comment, if not, let me know how it works out for you.

Download

(Download.com or download.cnet.com scans files while they’re still on the server, preventing you from getting a virus in the first place)

CCleaner - http://download.cnet.com/ccleaner/

AVG Free Antivirus - http://download.cnet.com/AVG-Anti-Virus-Free-Edition-2011/3000-2239_4-10320142.html

Panda Cloud Free Antivirus - http://download.cnet.com/Panda-Cloud-Antivirus-Free-Edition/3000-2239_4-10914099.html

Spybot S&D - http://download.cnet.com/Spybot-Search-Destroy/3000-8022_4-10122137.html

Related articles

• Download Panda Antivirus Pro 2012 Free 3 Months Service Installer (mydigitallife.info)
• Best Antivirus For Windows 7 (mademan.com)
• Softbuy.com to Release Panda Cloud Antivirus PRO (pr.com)
• Should I get an Antivirus with Spyware protection or get them … (sanjoseppl.com)