Advice Request Any Best Free AV Alternative for my new Windows PC

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conceptualclarity

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Qihoo 360, Avast, Avira. Look here and elsewhere for threads with suggested configurations.

Also you could find a giveaway of up to a year for a paid AV like Bitdefender, Kaspersky, McAfee. Check the giveaway forum here. Or if there's a particular paid AV you have your eyes on, search "[name of AV ] giveaway".
 

RoboMan

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I find Avast Free the most complete free solution, therefore is my choice when I recommend free antivirus :)
 
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Faybert

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If I were to choose a free AV, it would be Kaspersky Free, ZoneAlarm Free (ugly interface but great protection) or Avira, Bitdefender Free is also a good one, although I do not like its interface and its little or almost no configurations. I would not go from Qihoo, very weak and violates all your privacy, Avast is full of errors, especially this new version, well, that's my opinion.
 

conceptualclarity

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FortiClient Free. It's a full suite now, including exploit protection. All for free. Just turn on the advanced options and you are golden.

Forticlient - Next Generation Endpoint Protection

That page says "FREE DOWNLOAD" which is a term normally used for a trial version of a paid program. At the bottom of the page it says "FREE TRIAL". I think I might have heard of a free version of FortiClient, but I can't find any links to it there.
 

outlawxtorn

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I second Forticlient,(with zoo signatures) I use it and Voodoo Shield on my gaming rig. It's a great free av that goes under the radar.
 

conceptualclarity

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It's free and the free version is a full suite now.

Since I see you're a Fortinet engineer I'll take your word for it, and I thank you for alerting us to a very interesting offer. However I still note that the linked page gives every appearance of being only a trialware offer. Has Fortinet recently decided to make a dichotomy of business version paid, home version free for all private users? Or is there still a distinction between paid and free home user versions?
 
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ForgottenSeer 58943

@ForgottenSeer 58943 ! Wow! This is cool news. Can you point us to the download area for this? I'd like to look into testing this software out in a VM. This seems like some heavy duty software that is well worth looking into. Many thanks!

Forticlient.com is the download.

This is not a trial but the full suite minus the aspects that require a Fortigate appliance. You really aren't missing out on a lot since the free download client has almost everything in it except a few abilities you don't need/want anything.. 1) VPN to connect to Fortigate, 2) Sandbox but only IF you have an on-prem Sandbox Appliance and most people don't. 3) Centralized management/compliance.

Other than that, everything is now included in the free client including advanced malware detection(APT), exploit protection, traditional antivirus, web filtration, botnet detection/blocking.
 

Lightning_Brian

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Forticlient.com is the download.

This is not a trial but the full suite minus the aspects that require a Fortigate appliance. You really aren't missing out on a lot since the free download client has almost everything in it except a few abilities you don't need/want anything.. 1) VPN to connect to Fortigate, 2) Sandbox but only IF you have an on-prem Sandbox Appliance and most people don't. 3) Centralized management/compliance.

Other than that, everything is now included in the free client including advanced malware detection(APT), exploit protection, traditional antivirus, web filtration, botnet detection/blocking.

@ForgottenSeer 58943 Thanks for letting me know about this. I had no idea that Forticlient is free now! This must have happened a while ago or is this a new move? I'll be testing this out in my VMs with various security configs.

~Brian
 
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Faybert

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Forticlient.com is the download.

This is not a trial but the full suite minus the aspects that require a Fortigate appliance. You really aren't missing out on a lot since the free download client has almost everything in it except a few abilities you don't need/want anything.. 1) VPN to connect to Fortigate, 2) Sandbox but only IF you have an on-prem Sandbox Appliance and most people don't. 3) Centralized management/compliance.

Other than that, everything is now included in the free client including advanced malware detection(APT), exploit protection, traditional antivirus, web filtration, botnet detection/blocking.
It sounds interesting, if I was not testing G Data, I would test its efficiency in MH.
 

enaph

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Since you're on Windows 10 you can simply stay with Windows Defender and just add VoodooShield Free then you're good to go.
Believe me - you don't need any 3rd party bloated AV to stay secure just utilize what your OS has to offer and use Internet wisely.
 

conceptualclarity

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if I was not testing G Data, I would test its efficiency in MH.

If you're not going to test it here, somebody else needs to step up and do it.

Forticlient.com is the download.

This is not a trial but the full suite minus the aspects that require a Fortigate appliance. You really aren't missing out on a lot since the free download client has almost everything in it except a few abilities you don't need/want anything.. 1) VPN to connect to Fortigate, 2) Sandbox but only IF you have an on-prem Sandbox Appliance and most people don't. 3) Centralized management/compliance.

Other than that, everything is now included in the free client including advanced malware detection(APT), exploit protection, traditional antivirus, web filtration, botnet detection/blocking.

Thank you for the information. Very interesting. I have seen conflicting information about XP compatibility. Is say the next to last version XP compatible? I'm about to dump Panda (too many blue screens, questionable firewall, and PSANHost.exe too greedy for processing) , and this seems to warrant serious consideration.

What about the firewall in Fortclient?

How does it compare to Kaspersky and BitDefender in terms of burdening system performance?
 
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Pat MacKnife

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If you're not going to test it here, somebody else needs to step up and do it.



Thank you for the information. Very interesting. I have seen conflicting information about XP compatibility. Is say the next to last version XP compatible? I'm about to dump Panda (too many blue screens, questionable firewall, and PSANHost.exe too greedy for processing) , and this seems to warrant serious consideration.
Haven't you tried Panda Dome 18.04 (free) ? a lot better.
 
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ForgottenSeer 58943

I have seen conflicting information about XP compatibility. Is say the next to last version XP compatible?

Forticlient hasn't supported Windows XP since version 5.4. It is the opinion of Fortinet (and I agree) that nobody should be running Windows XP. FortiClient should be close to zero-weight on most systems though.
 
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ForgottenSeer 58943

@ForgottenSeer 58943 Thanks for letting me know about this. I had no idea that Forticlient is free now! This must have happened a while ago or is this a new move? I'll be testing this out in my VMs with various security configs.

~Brian

I've posted in another thread how to enable 'extreme' signatures (Zoo+) Also in another thread, I think were Cruel Sister tested Forticlient. But he forgot to turn on the enhanced features and we discussed that in that thread as well.
 
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