What is the lightest free antivirus out there for 2017?

Question

I'm currently using Panda free now and I'm not happy with it. My machine is running very slow and all scans are coming up clean. I'm looking for something light (but effective). Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Forget “the best” anti-virus. The best one is the one that you know how to use and that you like. There are many AV’s that work very well- both free and paid. I have never seen it necessary to use a paid AV. In the past I have used Avast and AVG. I presently use Windows Defender which has the advantage of being both a full time anti-malware and AV. Since Defender is free, you do not get nag screens asking you to upgrade to the paid version.



The AV is not what is slowing your computer. What part of the computer is slow? If it used to be faster, you can get that speed back. Do you mean it takes forever to boot, too long to surf the web or is just generally slow? There are many possibilities. These are the most common causes of a slow computer and their solutions.



1. Do you have enough hard drive space?

Press Win key-E, and click on This PC, you will see a thermometer gauge under the C drive. You can also right-click on the C drive and select Properties for more information. At least 10% (better 20%) of your hard drive should be unused. If lack of free space is a problem, you have a choice between eliminating unwanted programs or files or installing a larger hard drive. You can easily clone (not copy) your existing hard drive onto a new and larger HD using the free version of Clonezilla or Macrium Reflect Free.

Windows needs free space to function properly. Lack of adequate free space (even if you have no other problems) will slow a computer to a crawl.



2. What is in the Start Up group?

Many programs install themselves in the start up group enabling them to load faster at the expense of constantly using computer memory and CPU resources. CCleaner, Tools, Startup will tell you what is running and also gives you the chance to right-click on the program and select disable, which does not uninstall the program but prevents it from loading every time you start the computer. You will still be able to run this program any time that you want. If you encounter a file that you are unfamiliar with, and you will, Google it to see what its function is and if it is safe to disable.



3. Do you have enough RAM? If you have at least 8 gig, this is probably not your problem.

Right click on Computer or This PC on the Desktop and select Properties. Memory is cheap and easy to install, even on a laptop. Go to www.crucial.com and have it scan your computer to see exactly what memory your PC uses and to see how much it would cost to upgrade. (If your video card does not have adequate on-board video RAM, Windows will use system RAM for this purpose which reduces the amount available for Windows and other applications.)



4. Have you run the free versions of both Malwarebytes and CCleaner recently?

These will clean out a lot of crap and malware on your computer and free up hard drive space. (Remember that you do not gain space by deleting files until you empty the recycle bin.) Also, run Belarc Advisor to get a list of exactly what hardware and software is on your computer. Print it and save it since it records the product keys necessary to reinstall some of the software if this ever becomes necessary.



5. If IE or Firefox is very slow opening pages, go to Help and select “Start without add-ons” and see if this speeds things up. If it does, go to Tools, Manage Add-ons and disable all add-ons and enable them one at a time until you find which ones are slowing down the browser. Also, uninstall unused search engines and other toolbars. Simply not using them is not enough. Don’t have more than a few tabs open at the same time.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/remove-toolbar-has-taken-over-your-firefox-search



If you are not seeing the Menu bar, right click at the top of the screen and click on Menu Bar.



What Not To Do:

Don’t use anything called an optimizer or registry editor except the one in CCleaner. Especially avoid any program that finds thousands of “errors” on your hard drive that you can only remove by buying their software. Manual defragging is not necessary on a modern hard drive- Win 7 and newer do this automatically. (I still defrag once or twice a year.) NEVER defrag a SSD.

Answer 2

Webroot is without a doubt one very good AV. I have used it for 5 years. It is light on the system and gives very good protection. The scans do not really take long either.

Answer 3

Toss webroot secure anywhere on there and use Microsoft for periodic scanning rather than installing malware bytes or any other good malware scanner....... I have a tosh p875 with 24G ram, office pro plus 2016, powerarchiver for virtual drives rar, etc.... and of course a few other programs......Regardless, my machine is running windows creators update and at 6-7% memory continuously .....webroot by far is the lightest among Mic-soft, EST, kapersky, omg avira, avg panda are extremely heavy compared to the first few......however every system runs differently... If your system is clean, no malware you can still tweak a few areas to improve performance and privacy ..shutting off search index, many background programs possibly increase prefetch to 5 and leave superfetch at 3 in the registry...... modify swap file and empty if necessary on shutdown enabling though registry ....always tweak one area and let your system adjust a few cycles before the next. tweak.... increasing power management may help, as well as disabling or even reducing hibernation ( powercfg -h off ...or powercfg -h -size 50( 0r 60-75% your choice)and last but not least,,,ccleaner...don t even use the registry cleaner, also use advanced disk cleanup via run cmd.... "cleanmgr /sageset: 50(or any other random numbers) click system then most files other than tcleanmgr /sagrun: 50 to initiate the cleanup to rid old windows versions and other unnecessary crap other than ESD , source files, and WINSxS , I normally leave windows update alone too....and defrag weekly to ensure smooth performance via windows defrag............... ciao :)

Answer 4

AVG is one of the most lightweight Antivirus programs that I ever saw, it even managed to run well enough on my old Pentium 4 PC.



If AVG feels slow too, then I don't know what else to recommend. Except an Anti-Malware, it's several times more lightweight than an Antivirus but it also offers protection from different kinds of threats. I don't know if that would work for you.



Anyway, try out AVG. If it is slowing down your PC, give MalwareFox a try which is an Anti-Malware but should get the job done.



I'm leaving a link down below that explains the differences between Antivirus and Anti-Malware programs, just in the case that you're interested.

Answer 5

the smallest is probably the free version of AVIRA antivirus, don't let the fact that its free put you off - its still one of the best Antiviruses

http://filehippo.com/download_avira/

Answer 6

My favorite is Avast.

Answer 7

If your machine is clean and is running slow with Panda, you've got bigger problems.



Try the free Windows AV, and see if it still runs slow. Also scan once with Malwarebytes. If it's still clean, and slow, you need to either upgrade your PC or get a new one. (Or just accept that it's slow).

Answer 8

Windows 10 and Windows Defender.