Best free lightweight antivirus?

Hello everyone! I'm kinda new here :cool so take pity on me if this has been answered before (though I've used the search tool and the only relevant thread I could find was from 2009).


I have a sneaking suspicion that Norton is taking up a lot of resources on my brother's laptop. I've been using AVG for years, but lately I've been finding it a little annoying. I've been getting false positives A LOT lately, so when getting another anti-virus I don't think I want to try AVG. I've tried Avira but their pop-ups are so highly annoying I uninstalled it out of irritation.


TL;DR: What is, in your opinion, the best free lightweight antivirus? (Besides Avira)

 

AVG and Malwarebytes.You can all so try Super AntiSpyware.

I have not had any false positives with either in over a year.

 

Malwarebytes and SuperAntispyware are not antivirus.

Check out our Top Freeware Picks page under Antivirus Protection. http://www.majorgeeks.com/content/page/top_freeware_picks.html

Personally I use Avast! Free. If you decide for Avast, install it under CUSTOM, select the shields etc you want and untick the box for Google Chrome browser installation. Never had false positives in Avast.

 

I've used many anti-virus programs, and personally like MSE.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/microsoft_security_essentials_for_windows.html

 

MSE is surprisingly lightweight and works well.

Make sure Norton is completely uninstalled when you remove it.

 

Another vote for MSE.

 

Keep this in mind, from what I've read here at MG, MSE is slower on scanning.

 

Thank you so much everyone for the great suggestions I appreciate it!

I'm going to try MSE on my laptop and Avast on my desktop, see which one I like better.

 

They my not be antivirus but they are all so good to have.

 

The problem is in the way you stated it.
A beginner would assume those programs are anti-virus programs.

 

MSE is the best free and lightweight, no contest. But i think a paid one is more safe but thats just me.

 

I am currently using Avira anti virus and not had any problems with it so far.

 

avg for a long has always been the best the second choice is avast anti virus there both light on resources.

 

Here is a link to the latest test results (April 2013) for Impact of Anti-Virus software on System Performance by AV Comparatives.

Look at the Summarized Results on page 11 and you will see that Avast had the lowest system impact score (best) by a significant margin among the free anti-virus tested.

Check out the section A few common problems observed on some user PCs beginning on page 5.

 

All most every other Site that i went about 3 out of 30 AVG picked up a threat and removed it asap with out me doing any thing at all.

Of coarse i have the pro version with AVG firewall.Works well worth the money.

 

I try to test out each of the better free A/V's each year and one of the things I concentrate on is resources used (until very recently, I'd always had pretty weak older machines) and I agree with the AV Comparatives conclusion as linked by mjnc. I use Avast!

Altom85, what are your current thoughts, assuming you're using it on your desktop now?

 

Used Avast in the past, but don't use an active antivirus any longer. After a free 30 trial with Emsisoft Anti-Malware am just using it's scanning engines to scan the OS on occasion. That being said, I don't run Oracle's Java, don't run any Adobe software (flash player included), and run No Script and Quick Java in Firefox for web browsing. Also use PeerBlock set to run at start up through the Task Scheduler. And if all else fails have a back up or a Linux disk on hand to overcome any obstacles. I don't do e-mail, use OpenVPN more often than not, do startpage as home now, dumped google et. al. ,and a few months back got rid of the cell phone...

 

MSE is lightweight and does the job. It also has very fast scanning, depending on what mode you use. The default quick scan usually does the job for most malware. Scan through your entire HDD in a couple minutes - usually less than 3.

 

You should be able to determine that by using Task Manager; no need to make a guess at it.

I bought a laptop in early March 2013 with trial version of Norton Internet Security pre-installed and it was quite lite on resource usage. Norton's user interface panel even shows CPU usage, which reflects Task Manager.

When the trial period expired, I removed Norton and installed avast! Free Antivirus since I had previously used it and was pleased with it. But, had I decided to go with a paid product, I would have kept Norton.

 

Might be mine, Avast free. I used MSE for several years, and I can assure you, Avast is lighter weight. I found that when my Desktop or Downloads folders were open, MSE would go crazy on CPU Usage and bring my computer to a halt. I do not find that obnoxious trait with Avast.

Avast was the winner of a test for light weight AV on raymondcc, I believe.

Somebody said Avast didn't give him false positives. It has given me a number of false positives in the several months I've had it. You have to learn how to use the exclusion lists.

 

What do you do

 

MSE is nice and lightweight but the virus defintions only come out once a day. Not often enough for zero hour whatever-it-is. Using Avast Free, which seems good enough for me

 

I know this is out dated now, but I put Avast! on every computer that I either build or fix for someone