WANTED - Advice on great free anti malware

Hey there,

Advice on great free anti virus malware is kindly required.

As the market is constantly changing I thought I would ask for some advice on what is the best at the moment.

Of course this all depends on the environment one is working in.

I require the anti malware to be first of all free, its for a business educational use - I appreciate that limits the options somewhat.:cry

Have as small "footprint / overhead" as it were on system resources.

Is effective and doesnt have issues with Win defender or spybot, can be locked down from user interferance, also auto update malware signatures..

I had been using Comodo which was quite good, with the exception of a saility infection(..grrr) but have had many update issues and this leaves the units prone to infection:cry...which is of course totaly un"app"cetable...

The platform

Windows XP PRO SP/2 + SP/3
MS Office PRO suite
I.E 6 & 7 - upgrading units as time allows.
HP 2.4GHZ CPU
512MB RAM

If the settings can be password protected would also be helpful save having to "play" with gp.edits or permissions but not critical etc.. again must be free for business use though..gosh that makes it hard huh:confusedrolleyes


Thanks in advance for helpful advice. :wave

 

MalwareBytes
SuperAntispyware
SpywareBlaster
All 3 are on all my machines.

 

Same as hrlow2

Just keep in mind that malware is different than viruses so the ones that hrlow2 mentioned are not for viruses. That's why one can have more than 1 of this type of software installed on the computer.

Use only 1 software program for anti-virus.

 

Cheers guys for the "headsup"

So....Reccomendations for complete protection, malware, anti virus, trojan root kit protection etc..thing is I have to manage about 80 P.c's in an educational environment. As usual the boss doesnt want to spend any coin thus this puts some harsh constraints on this task.

My scenario in a nutshell...
Is a training environment those recently left school and also adults there is a mixture of half hackers :boxing (the school leavers these have had several years blogging how to get around the schools defences) and newbies that just accidentally make issues.

I have made a new build with Windows steady state to negate the newbie issues, and unforseen issues created buy the younger students, I was going to use Comodo but too many issues with updates..

Advice please like what would the moderators etc use for protection to prevent the neferious activities any reccommendations.

Thanks appreciate the efforts to-date.:wave

 

Can I ask how often you run them? Or do any of these run continually in the background?

Thanks!

 

I personally update every 2-3 days and run on Sundays and Wednesdays. Just to be safe.
Other users could maybe do once a week, depending on habits.
AviraAntiVir is set to auto-update and is run on same schedule with the others.

 

Is this your virus protection that runs all the time, or do you just scan with this?

 

Scan only.Good surfing habits mean a lot.

 

On machines "challenged" on resources, and by challenged it is usually XP with SP3 and less than 1G RAM, (I know, talk English). I use AVG with custom install and uncheck all boxes except for the top one for virus protection. So no additional language, no email scan, no Office protection, no link scanner.
This uses a relatively small footprint and provides good protection but doesn't make up for ignorant or reckless surfin' and download habits.

 

Cheers people:-D


Looks like somethings to look into.

These p.c's all have 1GB Ram, give or take a few MB's for onboard video.

Any particular configuration advice other than that already posted for these.
The users are a rather haphazard group from a broad range of backgrounds and ages.

I also use (recommend to others who may read this) Open DNS to assist with blocking sites - especially proxy sites. Used for blocking many of the illicit or neferious surfing activities, such as download of porn, gang related material drug use majority music videos etc. Monowall (linux) is the training firewall.

To summerize many of the users have never touched a p.c before others, including several tutors, have no concept of "safe surfing" more of an ...oh..look that looks cool I'll click on it - good grief:cry.

Several of the other trainee's, mainly fresh from school, try to work around these blocks not realizing there's nothing they can really do on the local p.c and try to "futz" with their p.c's configuration - settings.

To restrict this have used group policy to minimize the alterations to the system from user related threats...although one individual RDP'd to his home p.c and via his machine was watching porn and downloading it to the local machine on his class p.c and thus exposing our training network ...:-o:cry...cunning.

To keep these units more stable and easier to clean students files as they leave, and new students take over the former users p.c's, I have invested a fair bit of time in Windows Steady State, from what I understand similar to "Deep freeze" although I am unfamiliar with the latter.

Other than this all that really needs to run is the MS Office 2003 Pro suite internet access and an accounting package MYOB.

Also sys internals, another good app, is required to show on the desktop the user login, workgroup, ip and network connectivity speed and to keep the desktop background the same (just our .jpg showing business details on screen - company logo etc).
The users consistently have to try and customize the desktop - which is a major constraint as far as the boss is concerned..fair enough too... and thats it in a nut shell as it were - It is rediciously hard to stop users from changing the desktop wallpaper I was flabberghasted at the number of methods that I had to employ to work around this. group edit was not the one stop shop for this...any-hoou..

Advice on any of these to help tie our training network down would be great, but the pertinent point of this exercise is a cost free solution in protecting these p.c's from web based threats, be it malware, virus, trojans or downloading of root kits etc..

Sorry for the excessively long post, it may aid in understanding of what the tasks and challenges I am required to overcome here.

Thanks again for the recommendations to date..keep em coming..please.
- keep up the good work peeps - :wave