Free Antivirus / Firewalls?

[Avilan the Grey]

I have been running COMODO for a number of years, but lately I realized that COMODO is what makes my computer lock up at start about 30-40% of the times I start my computer. Now I just run Avast! and Windows firewall...

What are you guys using?

[thubby]

i use avast and superantispyware

[Cespenar]

I run Avast! as well, and have no problems with it. Changed to it from Avira because... popups.

Sometimes it does get a bit overzealous, though.

[Aotrs Commander]

Zonealarm is what I currently use, as it's now an antivirus as well as a firewall. In the past I've used AVG as antivirus (before it became such a massive system hog) and MSE until Zonealarm did both jobs.

[Avilan the Grey]

I am trying Zonealarm right now...
It seems Avast and ZA has different set of features... hard to decide.

[factotum]

Why is this in Media Discussions? Seems an odd place for it... :smallconfused:

Anyway, I use AVG (paid for) for my anti-virus and the built-in firewall in Windows for the other--it's a perfectly good tool and it costs nothing, so why not use it?

[Soras Teva Gee]

Zonealarm for a fire wall and Kapersky Anti-Virus (I got a special year with purchase thing so I wen why not)

Of course Adblock is almost as important a tool as those two.

Between the three I've not even had to clean out spyware for a year, I check and get nothing.

[erikun]

I've been using Avast Antivirus and Spybot Search & Destroy for the longest time. I've run across occasional problems, but nothing major and those two have been able to clear them out.

Then again, my computer has been having issues ever since I started using a wireless adapter. I'm not sure if the problem is some malware, with the wireless adapter software causing problems with the system, or with my computer finally giving out. I'm currently looking at running a few more scans to see if I can identify the problem.

[Weezer]

Avast for monitoring, protection and general anti-malware. When I have an infection I use spybot search and destroy and malwarebytes to get rid of it.

[Avilan the Grey]

I have settled for Avast, but what firewall...

[Weezer]

I have settled for Avast, but what firewall...

Haven't used a firewall besides windows firewall in years and I've had no trouble.

[Avilan the Grey]

Well Privatefirewall is out; it slowed my entire computer to a standstill. My guess is that it didn't play nice with Avast!, but since it locked me up complet ely I couldn't set the exclusions for it...

Online Armor Free is also out. Too bad, I really liked it, but apparently a known bug makes it incompatible with Firefox and Flash in combination (any page running flash makes firefox completely lock up and you have to kill the process to get out of it).

[Bhu]

I can find you a list of stuff if you need something

[Knaight]

My current main line of defenses are: Adblock, Noscript, Unix OS, Unix OS firewall, Clamxav.

[Reluctance]

If people would hurry the heck up and give unix stuff some level of respect, I'd be happy with it forever. That games are limited (and Wine only helps so much) and several services are wonky keeps tempting me back to Windows.

Classic "there's no support because nobody uses it because there's no support" cycle.

[Knaight]

If people would hurry the heck up and give unix stuff some level of respect, I'd be happy with it forever. That games are limited (and Wine only helps so much) and several services are wonky keeps tempting me back to Windows.
The only reason Unix works for me is that I barely care at all about games. There are a handful of indie games I like, and they usually have Unix ports (Mac and Linux at the very least) - even then, I'm not a video gamer at all.

[VanBuren]

Right now? Microsoft Security Essentials.

Not everything they make is awful.

[Avilan the Grey]

I went back to Online Armor Free, and instead rolled back Flash Player in firefox to the last of the 10.x versions (as suggested on Firefox own Help section. Apparently the bug is really with the Flash Plugin (all versions of 11.3x) and on my particular computer it only manifests when I have OA installed.

[GloatingSwine]

To be honest, if you're behind any form of NAT system you don't really need a seperate software firewall. From Vista onwards the windows one has been fine, and Microsoft Security Essentials is lightweight, non-annoying, and has a good detection rate (Avast is better, barely, but also much more intrusive and annoying).

[Avilan the Grey]

To be honest, if you're behind any form of NAT system you don't really need a seperate software firewall. From Vista onwards the windows one has been fine, and Microsoft Security Essentials is lightweight, non-annoying, and has a good detection rate (Avast is better, barely, but also much more intrusive and annoying).

I like a firewall that not only monitors OUTGOING files by default, but also give good options and dialogues when it detects new ones.

Also, although i to 90% use my computer behind my router AND my ISPs firewall in the basement, I DO take it on the road. Especially my mother-in-law lacks any kind of decent hardware firewall.

As for intrusive and annoying? Really? So far it has been very quiet. Of course I am used to Comodo, which is very... opinionated.

[GloatingSwine]

As for intrusive and annoying? Really?

Yes. Any time I ran a new program Avast would ask whether it should be allowed to run, except whatever I answered it would automatically terminate the process anyway and make me rerun it.

I eventually gave up and uninstalled it when it prevented me from running the latest Starcraft 2 update (which hung at 3% and eventually errored because it couldn't download until I disabled avast).

There is no reason for this. It is a bad program and it should feel bad.

[Avilan the Grey]

Yes. Any time I ran a new program Avast would ask whether it should be allowed to run, except whatever I answered it would automatically terminate the process anyway and make me rerun it.

Oh you used the internet security program (w. firewall). I just use the free Antivirus.

[Eldariel]

I'm running ZoneAlarm as my firewall and Malbytes Anti-Malware as malware removal (both free and very efficient). Then I have licensed Symantec Endpoint Protection as my anti-virus and of course, Firefox with NoScript and Adblock Plus.