Anti Virus Replacements

[laura_seabrook]

I've been using a "free" copy of ZoneAlarm for the last year or so. However, as the trial period was over I decided to use some other software instead. I don't have a credit card and renewing ZoneAlarm was expensive and hard to do. I tried renewing it by joining SnapFish but even there, I can't get "free" photo prints without a credit card (so no Zone Alarm renewal).

At the moment I have bot Avast! and Comodo installed. There's a bit of overlap and potential for them to fight each other - Comodo, which I installed second, found all the quarantined stuff that Avast! had already moved, and wanted to move them again! I got Comodo because it has a proper firewall, but maybe I don't need to run the anti-virus component while I have Avast! running.

Any ideas on this? Which Free anti-virus and Firewall would/do you run under Windows XP, and why?

Comments

[cyclops25503.livejournal.com]

Personally I use AVG Free...its a bit bloated these days, but for the price, its good. As for firewall, i'm on dialup at home, and therefore not connected to the intarwebs 24/7, and find the firewall built into XP is good enough...but you're on broadband, so you'll probably want something a bit better.

For the record, if you're running another antivirus program, make sure you have the AV part of Comodo disabled...you should really only have one antivirus program installed and running at the same time, otherwise, as you've seen, they can, and will, conflict with each other.

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

I used to run AVG a few years ago. Then it wouldn't run with a new video card I bought.

[cyclops25503.livejournal.com]

I'm just thinking...you're a uni student, right? Check your uni's IT division web page...i dunno if your uni would do this, but my uni provides free copies of Sophos to all staff and students. I'm running Sophos on my new machine, and its actually very good.

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm - that IS an good idea.

[faffinoodle.livejournal.com]

Doesn't the free ZA last for as long as you want??
I had ZA for years and it was a free edition... Prolly changed it?? I also used Ad-Aware & Spybot and they were the best in my opinion.
Having Vista is great because I've never had a virus.
You should ask at Uni though if you would get a discount at the Co-Op book store for software, or even officeworks. I used to get heaps of discounts.

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

It kept on bugging out if I didn't pick the Trial version.

[faffinoodle.livejournal.com]

Typical... I had problems with it in the end.