Free Anti-Virus Programs - Comments Page 2

I had Norton Antivirus installed on my Mac with OS 8 and OS 9. My Mac is now running 10.4 - I use ClamXav (http://www.clamxav.com/) and so far, no viruses have made it past the program. Please don't be hard on Bob - he doesn't know that much about Macs anyway!

EDITOR'S NOTE: Oh be nice! :-) Mac fans always say "There are no Mac viruses because the MAC OS is secure and impervious to all attacks." I do know a bunch of very smart, tech savvy people who use Macs and do NOT use anti-virus software. So the proof may be in the pudding. We just don't know all the ingredients.

Hi Bob, You are so correct about Norton! Sorry but I know you are old enough to remember "Danger Danger Stay Away Will Robinson." If at all possible stay away from Norton, as Bob says it is so intrusive to your entire system it is really a scary thing. There is good news though; they finally came out with a CD that they will mail you to properly uninstall it from your system. Before this came out it took me an entire day, and a 1/2 inch of paper instructions to find all (I think) the places it had installed itself!

I Like a-squared free, It Done a GREAT job here with having kids on the Computer,You Do a GREAT JOB, Look foreword to every news letter.Keep up the GREAT WORK.

For the Mac, I use commercial Intego software http://www.intego.com/ as part as a package suite. And now the reason for the post - although I haven't seen a specific Mac virus - the product also claims to detect macro virii- , their virus software has detected a number of Windows virus sent in email so helped me not pass those on. It isn't only about protecting yourself but also your friends. :-)

Thanks for the help. I've installed avast with wine in feisty, however I don't think that the Real time virus detection is working. The manual scanner and manual updater seem to be working. Should I try another antivirus to get the real-time scanner working? Is the manual scanner secure enough? I assume I should use anti-spyware too. Am I on the right track? If so, I hope this helps others when finding the right antivirus for wine. Thanks.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I think it depends on what you're running in Wine. Isn't that a single-program environment?

I think I might need to download a different antivirus. When I ran the scan, it suddenly stopped scanning on my /var/cache/apt folder for some reason. I don't know what a single program environment is. If you are asking if it runs one program at a time, yes. I think you can run more than one instance of wine if you want to run a second program though. I only have one program installed right now, which is avast. I plan on installing Exact Audio Copy, and maybe steam, but probably won't use it for web browsing or email checking, so I imagine I have a semi-low risk of getting a virus, but I am paranoid about security in Windows. I do like to be cautious. Thanks again.

Norton offers a free program which can be downloaded from their site for uninstalling their products. They don't make a lot of noise about it of course, but it is there. I have personally used it to uninstall Norton Antivirus which came with my HP machine, and it worked fine. See the url below, or if that doesn't work try Googling 'symnrt' (without the quotes).

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039

Check with your employer. Many have links to free-for-home-use AV software. Many Corporate, educational and Government employers together with the software developers, offer the software free as more and more employees are using home PC's for work and swapping files back and forth. I do use Norton this way (Yes, I hear the grunts and groans already) but I have saved $$$ in the update / renewal subscription fees.

Bob, Just like the Norton download mentioned above, McAfee offers a way to fully uninstall their products via a download:

http://ts.mcafeehelp.com/faq3.asp?docid=408294

Personally have used AVG products for more years than I can remember, and they have always worked flawlessly.

is it okay to use both AVG free edition and AVG anti spyware?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, that's fine.