Best free Virus Scanner and Firewall?

[reven]

hey everyone, i'm setting up a new development machine, and need a virus scanner and firewall for it. I'm sick of paying for norton and its daily scans.

For a virus scanner I want somethign that will keep my machine secure, running quietly in the background and use as little system resources as possible.

for a firewall i want something that will ask me about each program that is accessing the internet and if i want to block it, and low resources, and secure of course.

virus scanner ill probably go with avast, but theres always the debate over avg and avast, just wondering what real peoples opinions were.

TIA

[pBS]

avast..i use it exclusively and it hasn' let me down yet...[years and years on hundreds of machines]
even for those 'problem' customers who seem to go to every nasty site on the web, keeps them in working order...
plus it has a safe mode and boot time scans available to squash anything that does get in...[usually by 'user error'..lol]
plus it's the easiest on resources i've found yet...you'll notice no slowdowns at all...

for firewall i just use the windows one with a hardware connection firewall behind that...
[router firewall]

oh and also good to have Spybot search and destroy...cleans up after messes well, and has an immunization feature that helps keep them from getting in,and lessens what they can do when they do get in...plus tools to remove browser addons and startup stuff...
an invaluable tool...

[fshagan]

I have used both Avast and AVG, but I'm now using AVG. I like the scheduling and feedback aspects of it. It may take more in system resources than Avast, but it seems to have more options (inbound and outbound email scanning, for instance).

For a firewall, I just use my router's hardware firewall. I had used ZoneAlarm for a while, but noticed my system getting slower and slower and traced it to a corrupted ZoneAlarm database. The system was back up to speed after a fresh reinstall, but the problem happened again a few months later. ZoneAlarm does have the "grant permission for this program to access the Internet" feature you are looking for.

Then I had Windows Firewall turned on for a while, but finally turned it off.

[pBS]

avast does do in and outbound email scanning...just does it in the background... and web mail too..
i use the pro version but alll it adds is an active script blocker in browser..

avg would be my second bet...but it does let too much thru...and also gives false positives on occasion...something i've never had with avast..

norton was bought by yet another company, and they not good, newest Norton is a virus itself...[what would you call something that advertises constantly about it's other products, without option to turn it off? plus it pops up browser windows,just to waste your time..]
and it's guaranteed to slow your entire machine down..

Mcaffee isn't as bulletproof as it used to be..but it would be my next choice..too dang many 'modules' and stuff still gets thru...[eats lots of resources]

my tv machine haven't used antiviruses ever...don't need them if you have a hw firewall and don't open the browser...seriously...
3 years without an anti-virus and not a single problem...
it's not easy to hack into a box that doesn't 'invite' you in in some way...[usually browser vulnerability or email]

[Deusxmachina]

AVG or Avast. I've used AVG for a long time, and false positives are basically non-existant to me. I'm using 7.5 with the add-on spyware scanner. I think 8 takes more resources mainly because they added the spyware scanner in with it. Not sure, though.

Tests show Avira does well, but I can't recommend the free version due to the annoying popups, and if you want to see some false positives, that's the one.

Firewall is probably going to be Comodo or Online Armor. Comodo can dig in pretty deep, and on one of my PCs it started slowing down all browsing to a crawl. Switched to Online Armor and all is good. So I'd have to say go with Online Armor. Or some version of Tiny/Kerio personal firewall never hurts. Old but always got the job done.

[reven]

ok avast it is for virus scanning. i dont care about email scanning as i use gmail for all my accounts (got to love the pop3 gmail accounts feature)

anyone have any recommendations for firewall other than Comodo or Online Armor, or more feedback about those 2 products.

[martint123]

I've switched over to Avira for virus scanning. http://www.free-av.com/
And use the old version of Kerio as a firewall. http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/...opf215.zip

Both the above are non-bloatware and haven't given me any problems.

[topperdude]

+1 for Avira AntiVir.

Deuxmachina (and anyone else interested) - here's a way to avoid the popups from the free version.

BTW, looks like the newest release of Anti-Vir also includes built-in spyware detection/removal. See the lifehacker post.

-Topper

[ACTCMS]

oh and also good to have Spybot search and destroy...cleans up after messes well, and has an immunization feature that helps keep them from getting in,and lessens what they can do when they do get in...plus tools to remove browser addons and startup stuff...
an invaluable tool...

I'd second that one... I also recommend WinPatrol... with both of these running, nothing gets into your registry, hosts file or start-up programs without your express permission. I use AVG but I can't remember the last time I ran a full virus scan - the resident shield seems to do a good job.

All my machines use the standard windows firewall - but they do sit behind a domain server which is behind a router firewall.

[Fatman_do]

I use Online Armor on my home computer (basic windows firewall on my HTPC). Avast for anti-virus.

I thought about maybe using sandboxie, but I don't surf sites that make me want to have that level of protection so I just run as a limited user.