Any Good FREE AV's out there for WIN 7?

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With EOL Win 7 coming up, does anyone have a decent FREE AV going past EOL.  On a tight budget, and Avast/AVG (same company) has been getting some bad press lately…

Thanks in advance!

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330 ("The Tank"), Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", 12GB RAM, Group "0Patch", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations. Linux Mint Newbie
--
"The more kinks you put in the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the pipes." -Scotty

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geekdom

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Panda AV have a free version. Not sure of the limitations.
https://www.pandasecurity.com/uk/homeusers/solutions/free-antivirus/

cheers, Paul

p.s. I use Panda, not the free version.

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DaveYVR, Nibbled To Death By Ducks

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Kaspersky has a free version with limited settings.

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks

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I would stick with Avast as they still have one of the best AV that works well under Windows 7. The recent bad press has been a lot of old news and hype for attention grabbing headlines. The newly claimed https scanning has not materialized and looks so far to be a feature from five years ago. That was well documented at the time it was added and has an off switch.

If you know Avast and understand how to work the menus and settings then its perfectly usable.

With Avast you know they have a habit of adding new modules and settings with every new update. Their earnings model realize on getting and selling user data. But you can dial that back and opt out on a lot of that in the settings. You just have to keep an eye out for it.

As with any other AV. Sometimes Windows updates, browser updates or updates to the AV itself can interact badly with the AV software. What is meant to keep your system safe and healthy then destroys it. This is always a risk when using an AV but given the complexity of it all hardly surprising.

Alternatively you could use Windows own Anti Virus Windows Defender as this is not bad either.

W10&11 x64 Pro&Home

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks

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I use BitDefender Free. Very little impact on the system.

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JohnW, The Surfing Pensioner, Nibbled To Death By Ducks, Myst

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PKCano wrote:

I use BitDefender Free. Very little impact on the system.

I agree. Avast has got too large and unwieldy for me. I also run Malwarebytes Pro

Win10 22H2 Pro, MBAM Premium, Firefox, OpenOffice, Sumatra PDF.

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I use Avira Free on a couple of MACs. I like it a lot. It’s been a couple of years since I checked performance reviews but at the time it did very well. The free version claims it can’t scan usb drives, but a couple nights ago it scanned a usb hard drive I use for Time Machine backups on an iMAC.

There is a free version of it for Windows, although I’ve never used it on Windows.

Also, someone above suggested using Windows Defender, but bear in mind that when Win 7 EOL comes, Defender (or Security Essentials or whatever it’s called now) may not work and/or may not get definition upgrades. That’s what happened when my Vista laptop hit EOL – no more definition updates.

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[geekdom]

Microsoft Security Essentials and it’s likely to cease definition updates thereby adding insult to injury.

On permanent hiatus {with backup and coffee}
offline▸ Win10Pro 2004.19041.572 x64 i3-3220 RAM8GB HDD Firefox83.0b3 WindowsDefender
offline▸ Acer TravelMate P215-52 RAM8GB Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1265 x64 i5-10210U SSD Firefox106.0 MicrosoftDefender
online▸ Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1992 x64 i5-9400 RAM16GB HDD Firefox116.0b3 MicrosoftDefender

• This reply was modified 5 years, 7 months ago by geekdom.

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks

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Hi NTDBD “Nibbled”, I have had good luck with AVG since the 1990’s. It is not a good as it was 10 years ago as it is more intrusive, less user options, and more telemetry but I think I have a handle on that. See my post here: https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/avg-free-upgrade-in-2019/

Not all the bells/whistles and kitchen sink needs to be installed. If you have a 3rd party firewall you can block all the outbound telemetry and snoopyness too, and still get the definition updates.

Try not to use a one program does all since those are the ones that break your internet or email program. Norton, McAfee, Panda, were the ones that broke our users emails years ago.

Having web and email scanning is what breaks those aspects of the computer. Yes I know, “it has worked years for us” is what we hear when they are broken and an uninstall of Norton (symantec) would fix them. Most moved over to AVG and were happy.

NoelC has a real issue with Avast. https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/is-your-ccleaner-safe-new-evidence-suggests-maybe-not/#post-133725

For mom and pop, Microsoft Security Essentials (now called Defender) is just fine.

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks

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Hi Nibbled,

I used a paid version of Panda. Their free version provides extremely good protection and it includes a really good firewall. Another nice thing about Panda is that it was never affected by the patches for Meltdown, and it was never affected by any of the more recent Windows updates which have caused problems for many other AV vendors. Here is the direct download link:

https://www.pandasecurity.com/usa/homeusers/solutions/free-antivirus/

Best regards,

–GTP

 

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks

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I would like to note that panda free was a great option for a couple years. Unfortunately on their free version they have recently become very aggressive on the pop-ups near my system tray. I usually end up having to clear almost half a dozen when I come back to my computer.

Avast has gone in the reverse direction. They are not as aggressive with messages, and they seem to have disable by default some features that would muck up your system restore points if enabled.  So I may gravitate back to Avast. However, I have learned recently that their free version collects data from you. But for myself, that isn’t a huge concern and I can live with it if it means less pop ups.

Cheers,

Dave

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It is easy to turn off the popup notifications in the free version of Panda.

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I will assume you mean this:

Gets rid of this:

I have disabled them and will see what happens. I didn’t even think to try and disable anything like this since it has been the practice of companies in the past to use these as non-negotiable revenue generating streams. Thanks for the tip.

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1. Another good thing about Avast! is they won’t abandon you for some time yet. The program might stop getting updates after a year or two, but the definitions won’t.

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Too many false positives with Panda Dome.  I went with Kaspersky free version.  You do get popups offering you to use their servers for VPN, but limits the amount of free traffic.  I just decline.

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ClamAV

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I use Panda Dome on all of my computers. As a sanity check to make sure that Panda hasn’t missed anything, I manually run the free version of Malwarebytes from time to time.

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[deanwmn]

I used Malwarebytes free version for years and rarely, if ever, had a problem (I phrased it that way because I don’t REMEMBER having a problem!).  I still use it but now I pay for it just to have a few added features. I still think it’s the best.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 7 months ago by deanwmn.

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks wrote:

With EOL Win 7 coming up, does anyone have a decent FREE AV going past EOL.  On a tight budget, and Avast/AVG (same company) has been getting some bad press lately…

Thanks in advance!

I see quite a few posts on this thread suggesting that the AV they use has a ‘firewall’ software that is great or good. I don’t thing I understand the reason that really matters, please assist if possible. I use the built in firewall on the Windows system and every time I test my system (at least once a month) it shows that my system is ‘Hidden’ which is the best form of firewall. If the outside people can not tell that your computer is even there, than they have nothing to ‘hack’ into. Am I wrong in this?!

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Hello dtl6156, Anon #1929430 here. I am sure other good people will comment too.

“I use the built in firewall on the Windows system”, “every time I test my system…it shows that my system is ‘Hidden’ which is the best…” I assume you mean with GRC SheildsUP! If so, you are OK and protected from the outside.

“If the outside people can not tell that your computer is even there, than they have nothing to ‘hack’ into. Am I wrong in this?!” No you are right. You can be compromised by other methods (browsing/emails), but if you are Stealth then that is perfect.

“I use the built in Window Defender AV/Firewall and Malwarebytes Premium, with an added monthly scan using ESET Online Scanner. Have never had any virus/trojan/key logger etc. on any system I own.” Then you are doing the right procedure for you. The goal is to not have a compromise and if you are succeeding with that, then keep it up! I had a boss that said, “you can’t argue with success”.

The reason some people have the non MS firewall (like I do) is to have control over outbound information. The windows firewall is good. But I have had issues with making it block outbound items. A 3rd party firewall does a good job of notifying the user and letting them decide.

Go look at ClearThunder with his views on firewalls. https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/this-months-win7-and-8-1-security-only-patches-install-and-activate-telemetry-systems/#post-1951237

Hope this helps you.

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sorry a P.S. on my post.   I use the built in Window Defender AV/Firewall and Malwarebytes Premium, with an added monthly scan using ESET Online Scanner. Have never had any virus/trojan/key logger etc. on any system I own.

 

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