What Anti virus to use on new family PC? - McAfee preinstalled

BenEadir

Hi all,

Have a nice new shiny Dell Inpiron desktop which I want to keep safe and clean from viruses, spyware, malware etc. It will be used a lot by family members for websurfing and playing online games etc. It comes with McAfeee trial pre installed but I don't want to commit to a paid AV service - I'm on a tight budget.

I've used AVG free in the past on other machines. Is that still considered the best solution given my needs and budget or are there better solutions out there at the moment?

Also, if there are any suggestions for preventing the younger kids from straying onto porn sites etc that would be great. I've set up password protected user accounts for each family member so something which lets XXXX user surf freely but restricts YYYY user to pre approved white list sites or something similar would be great.

Appreciate your suggestions.

Ben

chin_grin

Microsoft Security Essentials. Has worked grand for me the last year and a bit with nothing coming through. It isn't intrusive as other av programs and runs silently in the system tray only notifying you when it finds something.

stanley1

+1

FSL

You also need to ensure everyone using it exercises common sense when browsing and dealing with emails.

If having a fully patched machine with up to date AV gave 100% protection the cyber criminals would be out of business.

Overheal

Webroot gave me a reacharound- i mean, a free year of their Complete dealio, and I have to say the program is pretty boss. Extremely light on resources, and the license for the Suite covers 3 PCs and 3 Mobile Devices (iOS/Android)

No substitute for Common Sense but a family is full of stupid, it must be said. Norton does do one interesting thing, with a service called Norton Online Family https://onlinefamily.norton.com/familysafety/basicpremium.fs the free version still does plenty to make it worth trying. And if you have kids, well, you have virus magnets.

On the cheap, I'd use Norton Online Family and Microsoft Security Essentials. AVG and Avast for differing reasons annoy the crap out of me, and McAfee is just a big pile of No.

BenEadir

Thanks Overheal,

I understand it is generally a very bad idea to use more than one anti virus software at a time. Will Norton Online Family work alongside Microsoft Essentials in harmony????

Ben

Morpork

Kill any Norton product with fire.

chin_grin

Morpork wrote: »

Kill any Norton product with fire.

+1.

BenEadir

Morpork wrote: »

Kill any Norton product with fire.

OK so whats the better alternative????

yoyo

BenEadir wrote: »

OK so whats the better alternative????

Microsoft Security Essentials, if you need all that family monitoring crap Windows has Live Family Security free and also K-9 Web Protection or OpenDNS, take your pick :P . Windows also conveniently ships with a Firewall which works alrite

Nick

chin_grin

BenEadir wrote: »

OK so whats the better alternative????

Look at this thread for a good overview of what people think.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056280359

As you can see MSE is in the lead.

Adyx

Another + 1 for MS Security Essentials. I use it on every computer I can along with OpenDNS for the family. Still no substitute for commen sense (recently proved by an incident with a "screensaver" installer).

Dey were Sooted

i've been a fan of eset nod32 for the last few years - good price if you buy a three year license and even better if you buy for two computers . i have installed MSE on a few computers for others recently going by recomendations here and all i can say from the little experience i've had with it is that it seems to run smootly enough - have tried norton,avg,avast and hate em all .....

you could try MSE for free and see how that goes . if you have any trouble get a trial version of eset on the system and it will find the problem .

paulgalway

Morpork wrote: »

Kill any Norton product with fire.

Have used Norton 360 for a number of years, never any problem and easy to use. Got it of ebay for €50. Covers 3 pc's.

Hal Emmerich

Avast - Switched to this as it has more stuff in it than Microsoft Security Essietials, like Sandbox and Webrep for example. Webrep will let you know if a Site is dodgy.

You can also set it to block Websites and then Password Protect the whole Program, I don't know how well this works/ if it's easy bypassed.

It's forever updating aswell:), no matter when I clicked Update in MSE it flipping Updated, I never liked that.

WOT - Like Webrep but it can also be set up to stop a dodgy site from opening in the first place, takes abit of fiddiling to get it right. It puts a Red Circle beside any dodgy link, even in Facebook, to let you know the Community has listed it so.

Malwarebytes - Comes with a Free Full Active Trial now, also blocks dodgy sites (3 of them now:D), very hard to resist buying this after the Trial, I couldn't:mad::P €20ish.

Run a Scan with this in Safe Mode once a Week either way, Free or not.

Don't let young ones click on links in E-mails.

deconduo

MSE + common sense

DanWall

I have the latest Norton (3 user licence) it works great. There is a lot of old fashioned negativeity about Norton, that was years ago.

Nothingbetter2d

i use avast, spybot search n destroy, and firefox/google chrome with adblock, no script, and World of Trust addons installed

BenEadir

Nothingbetter2d wrote: »

i use avast, spybot search n destroy, and firefox/google chrome with adblock, no script, and World of Trust addons installed

Thanks for that Nothing better but I have to take issue with your signature. If every country in the world took that attitude we'd be totally fooked. We'd have ZERO exports as everyone would only buy their own nationally produced products and be a lot worse off than we are today.

We aren't a self sufficient nation there are certain things we have no locally sourced alternative for such as oil, cars, trucks, hollywood movies, foreign tourists visiting Ireland etc etc.

International trade works BOTH ways and benefits both parties!!!

Ben

ScumLord

Morpork wrote: »

Kill any Norton product with fire.

Make sure it's dead too, it's ghost can haunt your PC if you don't use the right ceremonies (removal tool) to vanquish it permanently.

I'm using MSE haven't had an issue with it so far.

cookie1977

I like to install MSE on friends computers who dont want to spend money as personally I think it's the best free AV out there. But I myself use Bitdefender Antivirus which I've used for years and feel is well worth the money. I'm not as confident in MSE to properly scan usb thumb drives and other media when plugged into a PC as I am with Bitdefender. No AV is perfect and common sense is vital with what ever you install.

mike65

Avira AntiVir Personal

http://download.cnet.com/Avira-Free-Antivirus/3000-2239_4-10322935.html

Light on system resources, the full scan is deep.

yoyo

mike65 wrote: »

Avira AntiVir Personal

http://download.cnet.com/Avira-Free-Antivirus/3000-2239_4-10322935.html

Light on system resources, the full scan is deep.

Does it still pop up frustrating ad banners during update? Used to do my head in so ditched it!

Nick

biko

I use MSE + MBAM

mike65

yoyo wrote: »

Does it still pop up frustrating ad banners during update? Used to do my head in so ditched it!

Nick

Yes but its only one X click per week!

yoyo

mike65 wrote: »

Yes but its only one X click per week!

Was enough to put me off! At least MSE doesn't nag you unless its found something!

Nick

clintondaly

Avast and Malware bytes with common sense

DanWall

ScumLord: Here we go again, have you actually used the new Norton? or is it just hearsay to kill Norton?

ScumLord

DanWall wrote: »

ScumLord: Here we go again, have you actually used the new Norton? or is it just hearsay to kill Norton?

I haven't used Norton in years but I've had to remove it from plenty of friends PCs after it's initial trial period ran out and blocked the PC from getting on the internet, even after it was uninstalled.

Overheal

Norton Online Family isn't AV so it would run fine alongside firewalls or AV.

Adyx

DanWall wrote: »

ScumLord: Here we go again, have you actually used the new Norton? or is it just hearsay to kill Norton?

The point is why pay for Norton when in all likelihood if the protection offered by a free AV isn't enough, it's the users fault and they'll get infected anyway?

Fwiw, my own experience of Norton basically is also uninstalling it from friends and family's computers. Why? Because every time, without fail there is also a load of other Norton/McAfee shít installed with it. Even if Norton have reduced the bloat of the main program recently, the other crap makes up for it and it offers no more protection than other freely available products combined with common sense.

Krusader

I use the Free Avast & Malwareware bytes with the adblock add-on for Firefox, oh and common sense of course

Overheal

Adyx wrote: »

The point is why pay for Norton when in all likelihood if the protection offered by a free AV isn't enough, it's the users fault and they'll get infected anyway?

Fwiw, my own experience of Norton basically is also uninstalling it from friends and family's computers. Why? Because every time, without fail there is also a load of other Norton/McAfee shít installed with it. Even if Norton have reduced the bloat of the main program recently, the other crap makes up for it and it offers no more protection than other freely available products combined with common sense.

We weren't discussing their Antivirus though, just the Online Family program.

DanWall

I cannot uninstall Avast, their instructions says to go to Control Panel, but it's not in the add remove programms, any Ideas?

Kepti

Take a look for its folder in C:\Program Files

yoyo

DanWall wrote: »

I cannot uninstall Avast, their instructions says to go to Control Panel, but it's not in the add remove programms, any Ideas?

Download the Removal Tool

Nick