Good Free Antivirus

[Deleted User]

I am using Bitdefender free and find that it is way too slow (it takes a good 2 hours to scan my 1Tb SSD)

What is the current best free antivirus that is faster than Bitdefender ?

Also Bitdefender free has no "quick scan"

wongataa

If you are using Windows 10 just uninstall Bitdefender and use the free built in Defender anti-virus.

[Deleted User]

wongataa said:

If you are using Windows 10 just uninstall Bitdefender and use the free built in Defender anti-virus.

Is DEFENDER really any good nowadays though ?

It seems to go in phases - sometimes good, sometimes bad

IvanOpinion

Defender is perfectly adequate for most peoples needs.
Whether or not a virus detector is good or bad can hinge on the time of the day the software was tested ... yes really.  Group A may received an update against the latest batch of viruses while Group B does not get updated until later in the day.  So if the test is run in after Group A is updated and before Group B is updated then Group A may come out on top.

However, since Group B's update may contain additional updates, if the test is run after Group B is updated then it may come out on top.

I have seen magazine reviews of anti-virus software were two reviews, 3 months apart, are virtually the reverse of each other.

[Deleted User]

Is Bitdefender known to be a heavy resource user

According to my Task Manager - it is using 80% CPU (an i5) and 474Mb of RAM just to scan - which is absolutely ridiculous

wongataa

Deleted_User said:

wongataa said:

If you are using Windows 10 just uninstall Bitdefender and use the free built in Defender anti-virus.

Is DEFENDER really any good nowadays though ?

It seems to go in phases - sometimes good, sometimes bad

It is perfectly good.

mark55man

same question but Ubuntu desktop (sorry OP for hijack your thread) - our old windows laptop finally did my OH head in so I repurposed it

we used defender and its a beast on a slower laptop but never had any AV problems

[Deleted User]

Defender it is from now on then,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Bitdefender has taken 3 hrs 21 mins to reach 98% scan - of 121 million files and so far found no viruses !

pogofish

If only we had a sticky/guide for this...?

pbartlett

you could alter the settings to specify it doesn't scan specific file types eg jpg, mp3, wav, txt etc

Belenus

Deleted_User said:

Defender it is from now on then,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Bitdefender has taken 3 hrs 21 mins to reach 98% scan - of 121 million files and so far found no viruses !

121 million files? Is that a typo?

I have about 334,000 files on my 500gb SSD for Windows10 and apps etc and about 50,000 files on my 1tb data disk.

You have 315 times as many files as I do.