Trend Micro Housecall - Free Online Virus Scanner   

Really good in an emergency (providing you can still get online with your infected PC), and as a backup and/or second opinion to whatever antivirus product you have installed on your system. Best with 28.8k or faster modem.

Anti-Vir  

"The private and individual use of the AntiVir Personal Edition is completely free of charge!" - the website proclaims. No registration is required to download the 3.4 MB installation file, it's available in English or German, and there's an online support forum. Once installed, you may wish to maximise the security level by changing the "Search" setting in the "Options" to scan "All Files".

Both the Tray Icon and "AntiVir Virus Guard" resident scanning component use very little RAM (Click here for an alternative low RAM option) and seem to work well and unobtrusively in the background. The same cannot be said for the manual scan which is comparatively slow and also slows the system down noticeably, even when the "Priority" is set to "Low".

One of the peculiarities of Anti-Vir is that very often, the regular virus definition updates come as a new complete 3.4 MB installation file, which means you will then of course have to then install the full program and also sometimes be prompted to re-boot as well, in order to make use of the updated program components. This feature, and the self-testing routine that is invoked each time you start the main progam can be a little tedious, and mean that it may take you longer to make sure you have the most up-to-date protection before you start actually working, than with the other Windows anti-virus programs here.

All things condidered though, this is a thoroughly well produced, free product, and since the withdrawal of support for InoculateIT PE, its the easy no-cost choice for low MHZ, really low RAM systems (Note: Using the optional built-in "Scheduler" adds another 1.7 MB to the RAM requirement). Indeed, as far as I can tell, with the exception of cosmetic changes, AntiVir Personal Edition is exactly the same as Vexira Antivirus Personal which retails on-line for US$49.95!

 Grisoft AVG 6.0 Free Edition  

Free for personal use on stand-alone PCs, the installation file is 5.8 MB and you have to register on the website before it can be downloaded. Weekly downloading of updates can be scheduled automatically from within the program. Since September 2003 AVG 6.0 now uses incremental upgrades which means that virus definition updates will be smaller (some no bigger than 50 KB) because they only need to include information about the newest viruses. This is a great improvement for dial-up internet users used to waiting around around for the update to finish downloading. Of course changes to the program itself will still be around 2.5 MB but these will be relatively infrequent.

The free version is restricted compared to the full commercial version (which is now AVG 7.0) but still allows some configuration. The upside of this is that it doesn't need any adjustment or tweaking - you just install it and let it work.

Included in the program is an optional Plug-in for 'Microsoft Outlook Express 5' which is designed to scan the messages in your inbox and deal with anything suspicious before you even attempt to look at it. A little quirk that I experienced with this feature is that after I'd finished downloading email messages, I then had to close and re-open Outlook Express before AVG would detect, overwrite and quarantine any viruses attached to or contained in emails that had arrived since OE was first opened. This is not a big issue for me because I only use OE with the "Preview Pane" turned off and any virus will still be detected as soon as an attempt is made to open or move the file, but it is a little weird. AVG 6.0 can also certify incoming and outgoing email as "virus free".

Stuck with a PC with really low RAM?  AVG 6.0 does use more RAM than either Anti-Vir, InoculateIT PE/EZAntivirus/VET or Norton 2001, however most of it is required for the "Control Centre" which is accessed via the System Tray icon. The essential active scanning "Resident Shield" component is very small so on a really low RAM PC (32 MB or less) you can shut down the tray icon after updating. Of course, doing this will disable automatic updating of virus definition files and the plug-in for 'Outlook Express' so for maximum internet safety, this is what I do.

Start the machine - connect to the internet.

Double-click on the AVG tray icon to open AVG Control Centre and check for/install update.

Right-click on AVG tray icon and choose "Shut down AVG Control Centre" and continue working. (If you need the Control Centre again, just start it double-clicking the AVG Desktop icon, click on the box labelled "Control Centre", and choose "Activate".)

(You could instead use a Startup Manager to stop AVG loading in the first place although there's a danger you may forget to check for an update).

    Avast! 4

This product is a cut-down version of a very comprehensive, configurable and good-looking retail product but still includes all the important features, including email scanning for most email clients, file integrity checking, and screen-saver scanning with your choice of screen-saver. This latest free version replaces Avast32 and now only a 'Simple User Interface' is available.

Like its predecessor, it works very well. The Virus definition updates are very small and fast to download but it does use quite a bit of RAM(see chart) and take a bit some time to load at Start-up so for this reason only I would be reluctant to use it on a PC with less than 64MB (Win9X) or 128MB (ME/2000/XP) with more than a couple of applications running at the same time.

F-Prot Antivirus for DOS

This is the only free offering from one of the pioneers of antivirus software. Of course, if you're only working and browsing in DOS (Arachne users!) this is the one for you. It comes as a 1.3MB zip file, the contents of which you extract into an appropriately named folder. The updated virus definition update files must be unzipped and extracted into the the same folder each time you download them as well. F-Prot for DOS is an on-demand scanner only and is about as user friendly as a DOS interface is possible to be. As well, a number of helpful text files are included. F-Prot for DOS will also scan network drives when run under Windows.

About the Test Procedure

All testing was undertaken using Windows 95 & 98 SE on either AMD K6-2 or Pentium III 450MHZ PCs with 128MB RAM, working in an email virus/trojan-rich situation. Trend Micro Housecall and F-Prot for DOS are used by me periodically. Avast! 4 Home, Grisoft AVG 6.0 and Anti-Vir were each tested initially for a minimum of three months with ongoing testing taking place periodically. I have used VET / InoculateIT Personal Edition / eTrust EZAntivirus, Norton Antivirus 2001 and Trend Micro PC-Cillin 2000, 2002 & 2003 extensively and/or for many years. McAfee VirusScan 5, F-Prot Antivirus for Windows, Aladdin eSafe Desktop 3.0, Sophos Anti-virus and Vexira Antivirus Personal were/are also evaluated from time to time. Of course, however fair I have sought to be, there is no guarantee of a truly comparable assessment on my part. I'm just letting you know what I did.

"If these free programs are so good, why would you pay for Anti-virus protection?"

Well, if you want the extra features like personal support and after-sales service, etc, that you expect to get with a retail product, then you may well choose to do so. Some companies providing antivirus software free for private use only, say they are happy to do this because it can only help reduce the number of viruses that their corporate customers receive from their customers, i.e. you and me. Whatever the reason, a free product, even the ones that are a feature-limited version, or just one effective component of a more comprehensive retail package, developed and provided by a company keen to maintain its good reputation - is a free product worth taking advantage of. And I suppose these companies might figure that if I do need to buy something in future, I may well choose to support them ahead of others, in appreciation of the free help they are giving me now.

   Peter           pcinfo@optusnet.com.au                          Last updated 18 July 2003

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