(based on 410 reviews)

AntiVir Personal Edition 10.0.0.567

Rated 50/50 by The Seeker 11 at Oct 23, 2008

The lightest free AV out there. Detection rates are also excellent. This used in conjunction with some common sense will keep most people safe. For those wanting to disable the nag screen, see here.

Rated 50/50 by aruprc at Oct 23, 2008

The best with best detection and cleaning as well as fastest scanning engine out there.

Rated 50/50 by landfish at Oct 23, 2008

5 out of 5, as pointed out go to AV Comparatives web site to see why this is a winner. As for cleaning, if you do scan in safe mode, as you should to get rid of nasties, it wont miss a thing.

Rated 50/50 by Undesired Username at Oct 23, 2008

I don't know how good AntiVir is at cleaning, but as always, it's better to prevent an infection in the first place than to be a complete moron and run every "self-extracting archive" containing "Britney Spears nude pics" you receive in unsolicited emails.

Rated 30/50 by CGA at Oct 23, 2008

The good: Light on resources, good detection rates. The bad: Cleaning out detected infections is were i find that this AV fails totally. I had the opportunity to test this on a severely infected computer not long ago. Antivir failed at cleaning most of the detected viruses. No matter what i choose, delete, disinfect, deny access, the warning messages kept popping up again and again for the same virus. At last i had to resort to a Linux boot cd to remove the virus files.

Rated 40/50 by DudeBoyz at Oct 23, 2008

Auto updated to this version and seems to be working without any noticeable changes or issues. Yes, the daily nag screen is a pain, but the features, configurability, interface and detection rate this thing offers is certainly worth it. Good stuff.

Rated 40/50 by VelvetElvis at Oct 25, 2008

Slick antivirus tool, but loses a point for the nagware popups

Rated 50/50 by Adrian79 at Oct 28, 2008

I just dumped AVG after 4 years for this~! http://www.elitekiller.c...disable_antivir_nag.htm

Rated 40/50 by Voox at Nov 7, 2008

Great Free AV program. Very light, great detection. I just wish Avira would get rid of the nag screen, regardless of the fact the user can restrict it. I recommend this just above Avast, and way over AVG.

Rated 50/50 by ModderXManiac at Nov 10, 2008

As far as detection combined with how lightweight its real-time protection is, and after using everything freeware available, I can officially declare this the best freeware Anti-Virus solution, period. Avast and AVG Free, booo, this detects better than both and is lighter than both. Don't like the nag screen? well that's an easy fix. http://www.elitekiller.c...disable_antivir_nag.htm

Rated 50/50 by some guy at Nov 28, 2008

best freeware virus program period oh pollok2 F you and your wanna bee Warez site

Rated 50/50 by Adrian79 at Nov 28, 2008

google nag screen, everything about avira is smooth and accurate

Rated 40/50 by Undesired Username at Nov 28, 2008

There's another way to disable the notification. It's called buying the full version. Couldn't resist, sorry. I use the "premium" version and I'll never go back to the highly-overrated NOD32 or the highly-buggy Gaspersky*. Avira detects more and doesn't make my system feel like it is a P-33 with 32-MB of RAM. My main gripe is that Avira generates too many false positives (FPs). This can cause not only headaches for users, but serious headaches for the software vendors unlucky enough to have their wares incorrectly flagged as "malware". Oh, and if you do not speak German and try contacting Avira, either to submit a sample or request sales or technical support, be prepared for a serious language barrier. Their English is terrible. I'm not a chauvinist, I'm just saying if you sell worldwide and particularly in the US, you rrrreally should learn English. * Spelling intentional :)

Rated 50/50 by doctorsmith at Nov 28, 2008

I've been a long time user of Avast but recently have been using Avira and am now a convert. As pointed out below it's hard to go past the data at http://www.av-comparatives.org/ , I'd hate to have been paying out top $$ for some of these AV programs after checking the scores at av-comparatives. The nag screen is, well, a bit of a nag, but it's hard to complain too much about the price as your getting the program for zilch, besides it's easy enough to disable.

Rated 50/50 by XhmikosR at Nov 28, 2008

@roj: I agree with you, but you can remove the nag screen. http://www.tipsfor.us/20...ree-edition-more-usable/

Rated 40/50 by mynamehere at Nov 28, 2008

I switched from Avast! to Avira after reading http://www.av-comparatives.org The nag screen only pops up after an update & clicking OK just closes the window, it doesn't take you to their site pr anything, so not a big deal. If you do a search you'll find that there is a rather simple way to disable it, but I believe there's also a possible downside to it. My only problem is that I haven't gotten it to ignore complete hard drives under exceptions & the "nag" screens take focus from full screen games, after an auto update.

Rated 40/50 by roj at Nov 28, 2008

Great product but truly annoying and inexcusable nag screen. The process to rid oneself of the nagscreen is similarly odious. If this is free for personal use but you still want to flog your commercial version, then that's fine but there are more civil ways to do it. That drops the score to FOUR instead of FIVE.

Rated 50/50 by keiichi999 at Nov 29, 2008

the best free anti-virus period

Rated 40/50 by glassdesigns at Nov 30, 2008

When AVG released version 8, I went looking for a new free anti virus program. I tried them all and finally settled on this one. It has the best detection results of them all and does it with the least amount of resource usage. What more could you ask for? I give it a 4 rating because of one bug. When the check for rootkits is activated the automatic scan hangs about half way into the scan. By default the check for rootkits is not activated and I guess this is why. When this bug is fixed, I will definately be rating this program a 5. PS. I also found the nag screen very annoying, so I deactivated it. Now I consider this truly freeware instead of adware.

Rated 50/50 by eclipsingdivinity at Nov 30, 2008

An extremely powerful antivirus with the added benefit of being free. Never had a problem with this AV and it's one of the lighter ones in the market today. Couple it with a few other free programs and you'll be virus free for a very long time.