What is the best free antivirus software for my windows 7 computer?

I find Avira with Malwarebytes to be the best. Avast is also good and AVG.

It just depends on your system specs as to how fast any antivirus can scan. And yes the more that's on the drive the more it has to scan.

Avira usually has the best detection rates of any free solutions based on the AVComparatives independent testing.

http/www.av-comparatives.org/

I use Panda. I don't care about speed - I set it to do the scan when I go to sleep or am busy doing other things.

^ Yep was just about to recommend that. Just set it to scan when you aren't using the computer if it slows you down.

Bitdefender FREE.

If you look at the real world benchmarks in the AV Comparatives test above Avira and Bitdefender both have 99.4% detection rates. Those are the highest of the free antivirus suites. Either one with Malwarebytes is a great choice.

You shouldn't have more than one antivirus program installed at once. MSE is useless. It only has a 60% detection rate and is not recommended by anyone. Windows firewall is fine especially if you have a router but once again you don't want multiple firewalls installed at once. It's only going to cause problems.

^^ THIS

Personally, I'd receommend using BitDefender as your AV, Comodo for your firewall (the free version, if you want one), and then use MBAM for malware protection. If you want a second opinion for malware, give Hitman a try.

Arira is an antivirus program not a firewall. You only need the firewall built into Windows especially if you have a router with a hardware firewall. I've always found software firewalls to be a more of a pain than a help.

MBAM = Malwarebytes Anti Malware. It's not so much a preference as the recognized best program available based on testing. It is not an anti virus program though so you need both.

Uninstall any antivirus programs you have except Avira.

FYI, i'm able to keep WinDefender installed while installing and running Panda. of course WinDef ends up being disabled as you can't have two AVs running in parallel, but it can stay installed. hey, if WinDef starts to register as a virus during a scan, there's a problem!

Is there anything wrong with Avira? No. Would I recommend Avira, based on independent test results that I've seen openly published? No. Is it a decent AV software? Yes; however, there are ones that do perform better under lab testing. In the real world, my personal recommendation is to use a top rated AV software, and just pick the one that gives you the least problems. Yes, we'll all have certain issues with the GUI, or with just about any aspect of software. On the other hand, protection should be the highest priority, and you should ideally try to make the software work for you, instead of just trying to find one that "works" right when you install it. But, that's a whole different discussion.


This could easily be debatable, but I'll agree with you on the premise that we're simply talking about the 'average' user (someone who doesn't even know what a firewall is, or what it does).


I don't believe you can remove Win Defender properly, unless you really put in some effort. It's pretty heavily rooted into the OS, if I'm not mistaken (which is ironic, considering how poorly it performs).

Outside of having Win Defender installed, you should never have multiple AV wares installed. If I need to dig up a video clip that explains this very simply, I will (the guy who says it used to do programming for Microsoft); but please, everyone, take that advice... pick an AV, and either stick with it, or remove it COMPLETELY before installing another one. AV software needs to work in a certain way, and having multiple AV's is asking for problems.


Not uncommon with free software. Most likely, AV companies will try to push a full security suite on you, in one way or another.