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Windows 7 AV?

sswilson

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I'm shipping a laptop off to a relative who's not PC savvy at all, and who doesn't really have any kind of support network. Essentially what's happening is that I've purchased a second laptop that'll be swapped out every couple of years so that I can do a proper fresh install to verify all the uguly bugulies are gone rather than attempting to decipher over the phone questions about whether or not a particular on screen "warning" is safe to click on or close.

Windows 7 is a must for now as windows 10 was attempted and strongly disliked. (I can cross that barrier at a later date)

I'll be installing a paid malwarebytes instance, but I'm wondering if anybody with current windows 7 experience has any recommendations on a decent bullet proof free AV other than the Microsoft one? I have no confidence that MS is putting any kind of resources into the virus definitions and/or core engine.

Any suggestions?
 

JD

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All the free ones have nag screens at some point or another these days...

IMO - antivirus is useless these days as people don't typically get viruses. That Malwarebytes has an active scanner? I think that should be sufficient.
 

sswilson

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Yeah, the malwarebytes install will be the most useful as it will block questionable websites.

I've re-installed the MSE and it does appear that they're still putting out current definitions so maybe that'll be enough.
 

frontier204

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If av-test.org is to be believed, than Microsoft's antivirus solution (Security Essentials, Defender, or whatever other names it comes by these days) is now middle of the pack when it comes to detection. I just went through the set of free antiviruses myself to check try them out:

* Comodo randomly asks you to ascend to admin to tell you that your browsers aren't using their recommended settings (as it it gives you random UAC prompts)
* I found Bitdefender to be one of the less annoying ones and slightly faster than Microsoft's on the Intel Atom type "Celeron" chip. (Oddly enough their paid version is more annoying with the popups telling me that my home wifi network is unsafe than the free one.)
* Sophos has everything managed from the cloud (the AV actually has no GUI because it opens a web browser to their site) - to me that SCREAMS the possibility that you computer will just get remote-controlled when someone hacks whatever that communication hook is

One thing I recommend if possible is a limited user account - I found that able to defend against more bad stuff (whether it be adware or viruses) than have the non-savvy person as admin and any antivirus you want.
 

sswilson

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I'll have a look at the limited/standard account but still leave the admin account accessible since she still needs the ability to do things like install printer drivers. She doesn't do anything like online banking where security is really an issue, it's more along the lines of trying to keep PUPs off of her system.

On another note..... W7pro + Mech Drive = Holy crap that's a long boot into desktop...... :)
 

Shadowmeph

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to be honest I haven't had any Anti virus installed on my PCs since the beginning of windows 7. I just am careful of what I am downloading links I am clicking on or what I am installing. and in all of those years I might have been infected once and that was because of my own laziness. my theory is this is you have anti virus installed and a brand new virus gets out there you will get infected . I just use spy bot search and destroy . I do have the free malwarebytes installed but it is turned off .
when I first gave my mother a laptop years ago so she could watch You tube videos or videos that I put on a usb and gave her and get an email address I just installed Linux , you still can get infected but not as likely as windows and she loved it. when I gavbe her a newer laptop it had windows 7 on it and she hated it because of all the crap on it that she never used.
as for myself the only reason I use windows is for gaming I do have windows 10 on both my laptop and PC but I will be switching my laptop to Linux then installing kodi on it to stream videos onto my TV
 

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