XP Antivirus Software

With Microsoft ending support for XP, I'm looking for antivirus suggestions to replace Microsoft Security Essentials and Windows Defender. Free would be best. Second best is no annual subscription. Thanks. :)

I have been using Bitdefender. They have a free version and if you watch the deals you can get multi-year and multi-pc's for a good price. http://www.bitdefender.com/solutions/free.html

Linux or OS X. The latter isn't free but doesn't require an annual subscription. :)

Often, the early versions of AV software only does scheduled scans and not real-time protection, so read carefully before installing. That, or only the pay-version has real time protection.

Symantec/Norton/McAfee are, IMO, bloatware. There's no reason why real-time AV protection should require 400MB of RAM or more and slow a system down by 10-20% or more if the system has a slow CPU or slow hard drives.

If the software hasn't updated the av definitions and has used real time protection ever since the last update, why does it feel the need to scan the entire computer every week? Or, if every file gets read, and therefore scanned, during the full system backup every week, why does the av software feel the need to do it again at all?

The best anti-virus software you can get for free is common sense. That, and a conspiracy theory complex. If you only install software that you can guarantee is 100% virus free and only visit web sites that you can guarantee are virus free, you really don't need AV software. That, and you have to stop sharing files with your relatives, especially the aunt or uncle who sends you every email chain letter known to man. ;-)

That having been said. AVG.

I use avg Free also. I also like Malwarebytes

I use avast, I got tired of all the crap that avg was putting on a few years ago.

Well I use AVG but in a VM. This keeps AVG under my control not the AVG devs. So now AVG only consumes system resources when I let it. For the VM to work on scanning my C-Drive, I just added it to the VM as a Shared Folder. Works great btw.

I voted "Other". And by "Other" i mean "none" :p If you use it for something other than crunching i guess, sure. But I don't have anti-virus on any of my computers actually. Hack me if you want. My data will bore you to death :))

Ditto. No AV on any of my machines. However, all my windows machines are dedicated crunchers.

I have no AV on my crunchers either. I don't surf with them :D

From IRC chat 10/9/2014

[22:46:49] paul_l what we've found that worked pretty well was AV suite of choice, Spywareblaster setup right from the start and updated manually everyso often, SuperAntispyware and Malwarebytes
[22:50:52] paul_l spywareblaster is free
[22:51:48] paul_l SAS and malwarebytes has a free version but wont auto update or stay in memory