Best virusscan?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

I'm doing a scan of my startup and task manager and so far I've found three viruses that mcafee hasn't.

So, I'm in the market for a better virusscanner.

[Fyron]

No virus scanner is perfect. I'd recommend AVG and/or Avast (don't have both running resident scanners at the same time, naturally), combined with periodic scans from Panda Soft and Trend Micro online scanners. There is usually little need to actually buy a virus scanner, unless you manage a large enterprise network.

[capnq]

I'm currently using ClamWin, which is free. My only complaints about it are how long a scan takes, and a few false positives for one particular virus.

[DeadZone]

I use NOD32, has kept me safe for over 4 years
Downside is, its not free

[Fyron]

This article about a recent detection rate test might prove useful.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Thanks guys.

[Crafty]

List of freeware antivirus here

http://wiki.castlecops.com/Lists_of_freeware_antivirus

Do an occasional online scan also

http://wiki.castlecops.com/Online_antivirus_scans

[narf poit chez BOOM]

New question: If one were inclined to buy a virusscan, which would be the best commercial virusscan?

[Fyron]

Buying AV apps is a huge waste of money...

[AstralWanderer]

AV Comparatives provides one of the best tests of AV performance (their last one used almost 500,000 items of malware) so should be worth a look. Kaspersky tends to do best on straightforward scans (and it includes other features like Proactive Defense that can limit what unrecognised malware can do) while NOD32 does better at the retrospectives (tests using 3 month-old signatures on newer malware to see how scanners' heuristics cope with unrecognised items).

AV-Test.org is another major testing body, producing reports for other publications (a recent example being this PCMag AntiVirus Roundup).

Wilders Security has an AV Software subforum for more discussion of these (and other) results.