Should I keep this? It uses McAfee, but many have told me that it isn't all that great. Can anyone recommend a better, free anti-virus/adware/spyware scanner that doesn't take up a lot of space?
203812
Better to use AVG or Avast. Both are free and don't hog resources like McAfee and Norton.
71234
Great information but I think that should only be for people what have an idea what to look for and know what to do about it.\n\nWhile we are on the subjet, let's remember that a good virus scanner is important.  You don't need to spend alot of money or run a pirated copy.  Go to the first link below for a very effective and free copy.\n\nNeed to remove spyware?  Another great FREE tool is Ad-aware.  The second link below.\n\nLook around www.download.com for many other great products.  Before you ask, NO I do not work for them, I just love free products that work well.
286203
AVG from Grisoft is a very good free anti virus. Just be sure to keep it updated. For a good free fire wall I like Zone-alarm it is far and away better than XP's built in one. It does take a little time to setup but it is well worth it. For a good free anti spy wear Spybot search and destroy is my favorite. Just a note if your old drive just has a virus and was working okay otherwise you can zero(wipe it) with the software available from the manufactures site or killdisk - see sources. You would have a spare drive then!!!
57261
Sometimes a different virus scanner will pick out the virus. AdAware and Spybot are two good ones to try. Just be sure to turn off (disable) McAfee while scanning.
76965
I finally managed to get through to McAfee after spending around £40 ($70) on a premium rate telephone line. (And they call it customer care !!!). In the end I ditched the company and the software. It seems they want your money but don't want to provide the customer care. Personally, hell will have to freeze over before I use McAfee again.\nYes, sebastian 640 - you have my every sympathy.
63361
Start Menu/Control Panel/Add and Remove Programs would be where I would start.  Maybe get a virus scanner McAfee works quite well.  and get the updates.
552641
I have to say I was very surprised by the list of top 25 AV.  I've had AVG and Avast both pick up numerous infections that many of the others rated higher than them failed to spot.  \n\nI personally love AVG, because it's free and have a very minimal impact on performance.  Although NOD32 and Kaspersky, paid versions, are very good as well.  I would rate them above AVG if I made a list that included both pay for use and free solutions.\n\nI can't fully recommend Avast, as on more than one occassion on seperate machines it somehow managed to replicate the entire hard drive.  No explanation, no weird infection, just some software glitch.\n\nSpybot is a must, as well as Adaware.  There are also some paid solutions, like Sunbelt's Counterspy that I love and think works fantastically.
173755
Ya, I hear ya brother.  I am in the business and I do not even run any virus protection nor adware crap or spybot propaganda.  I have yet to get a virus?  Never been infected in 16 years, it baffles me to no end all the computers that come into my shop infected, and they all have umpteen programs on their system to protect them, doesn't seem to work all that well does it!  I still say my behaviour and my brain are the best firewall/virus protection.
98638
I've tried several anti-viruses, because i wasn't happy at all with them. If I take it as an anti-virus than I would say Norton is the best, but in my opinion it sucks your memory and integrates itself everywhere. Then there is Bit-defender. I liked it, but the fact is it updates itself too often, and the bad thing about it is that it restarts itself. And this can be very annoying for 2 reasons: firstly during the restart you are unprotected (for about 2-3 secs), and secondly if it updates during a system scan, than the scan will stop; and this is very annoying when you have a big and full hard-drive which needs more time to be scanned. \nI'v also tried McAfee. It's firewall is pretty good, but it lacks on the virus part. Simply it did not find some of them.  The same thing is the problem with Nod32 or AVG. I now use a trial version of PC-Cillin, and for now it's OK. You could also try Kaspercy (I haven't tried it yet) but I heard it's pretty could. \nSo my answer is, that all anti-virus and firewall softwares are pretty good, and they can all protect the avarage user. \nI'll let you decide which one suites you the best. ;)
470068
Ditch McAfee - Download AVG Antivirus!! Its free, but much better than McAfee.\nhttp://www.download.com/AVG-Anti-Virus-Free-Edition/3000-2239_4-10320142.html
531935
find and download :" a-squared free " and install it, you have to register it to activate it and it takes a little time to easily set it up, but is worth the wait! (your first scan should be a deep scan) and when you are finished, quarantine everything it finds so you can put it back if needed. after a couple of days if there is no ill effects delete them all! This will blend with all other programs you have .(It is the ultimate supplement) And best of all it's free and fixes things most premium software can't! and it's updated sometimes more than once a day if new malware and etc. are found!
45904
I like CCleaner and RegCleaner.  I had a very short experience with McAfee (many years ago) and I found all of their products to be lacking, I prefer freeware protection all the way.\n\nOkay, well you don't need more than one anti-virus solution because having more than one of those on your system will potentially cause them to interfere with each other, in severe cases they will identify the other as a virus, prevent your PC from booting and generally cause more problems than having more than one will fix.\n\nI don't like McAfee and Symantec because I have seen they use far more resources than their freeware counterparts, I have also seen that AVG for me personally provides better protection than either McAfee or Symantec.  If you're interested you can check out AVG free at http://free.grisoft.com/ but if you're happy with McAfee and it works for you I see no reason to change your anti-virus solution.\n\nWith that out of the way you do need more than one anti-spyware solution.  No one program will always have the same definitions as the other and no one program will detect every single piece of spyware out there.  For this, you can keep the protection offered by McAfee as far as the anti-spyware is concerned but you should also get (you can Google them), Adaware SE Personal, MS AntiSpyware Beta, Spybot Search and Destroy, SpywareBlaster and that should keep you more than covered, I would say they protect your system when used together 100% spyware free but that is a condition I cannot guarantee so I'll say they'll keep your system 99.99% spyware free.\n\nMS Antispyware provides active protection as does SpywareBlaster and MS Antispyware is also an excellent scanner.  Adaware SE and Spybot are just "dumb" scanners with no active protection (Spybot does have the "Tea-Timer" feature but it is as annoying as heck).\n\nSpybot and Adaware (the free version) can be used without limitations and are 100% free, no ads, pop-ups or anything and no annoying screens asking you to register either.  The same goes for MS AntiSpyware but the program will expire and to fix that all you have to do is download the update package from Microsoft when it does.  SpywareBlaster is also 100% free and offers up another layer of active protection from Spyware.\n\nThose are my recommendations but this page, http://www.photoshophow.com/freeware.htm has the largest collection of freeware applications I have ever seen, there are lots of anti-virus and anti-spyware programs to choose from.
347661
i believe ur talking about these:\nAVG Free edition (antivirus)\nMcAfee Stinger (backup scanner)\nLavasoft Ad-Aware SE (antispyware)\nSpybot Search & Destroy(also antispyware)\nZoneAlarm (firewall)\ntheir all very good programs thy run great (even AVG free haha) and best of all theyre freeeeeeeeeeeee.\n(get em off download.com)\n;)
442792
don't even try to open it !!!that's a probably a virus,run a security program as soon as possible and if you don't have one go to www.mcafee.com.listen some viruses the capacity to even fool all those spy programs you have use,if the problem still there,its kind of time released (in any determinate moment it will show,try my suggestion ,an if is not a virus ,the software have the properties to erase that file(its free to try)
282552
Hi, you had one mighty big answer to get through...lol..\nsomeone else recomended trend mico house call, it is good for free scan and removal, but you can also get a free 90 day trial on trend micro pc cillin, there are other free trail programs available as well from microsoft, just go to this microsft site for their free trial offers on different products  ..http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/viruses/wsc/en-us/default.mspx  , panda, Mcafee, pc cillin, \nF-secure, are free trial some for 30 days or 90... I would not recomend Norton or Mcafee, I have just uninstalled Norton after two years of having this product, it does not detect and delete all viruses and trojans, I found it useless to rely on this to fully protect pc from such.......I use spyware doctor, pc cillin, and will install a couple of other programs such as an easy clean, you can have more than one or two antivirus programs, not all are compatible with each other and some are...as far as trojan viruses go it would be a good idea to have a look at http://www.anti-trojan-software-reviews.com\n\nhttp://www.techsupportalert.com/free-vs-paid-av-part2.htm\nhttp://www.techsupportalert.com (home page) it lists all the best free ware untilities\n\nhttp://www.spywarewarrior.com good site for info on which antispyware programs are scam/rogue and which are legitimate
634315
Avast has a scanner and virus cleaner. You have to have the free home edition anti-virus software though. I really like this one. I had a win32.sasser on mine and it washed it right out and restored some files. My PC is running smoother now. It also has a kick a$$ database update. The only thing that it doesn't seem to be compatible with is the Adaware software. But that is because it is a data miner. AND on the plus side of things, both the anti-virus and the cleaner are totally free. Yeah, I have the Adaware SE on my computer too. But you can set it up to accept the program as safe file.
592888
ad-aware and spybot both together work fine, don't listen to others who say to have both is wrong, it was recommended by download.com to have both, and i'm also a tech for over 8 years and do reviews of software for download.com, and to have both of those right now is your best protection, and neither one will conflict, it's a known fact....I run them both myself....\n\nfor one thing...Norton sucks, sorry to say, but it does, hogs resources like memory etc, and makes your p.c sluggish, plus it's not really easy to uninstall.\nfor anti-virus, try AVG or Avast, BOTH are proven to be top of the line right now, all the rest kinda stink in comparison