Best virusscan?

[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...

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Thank you for your opinion. However, it is not an actual answer to the question I asked.

[Fyron]

If you really feel you must waste money, it appears that NOD32 is near the top from the test results I linked to earlier, and I tend to see it recommended more than Avira... But I still suggest not wasting money on AV, since the free ones are just as effective if you practice safe computing.

[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.

[Fyron]

Kaspersky is really, really, really slow at scanning.

[AstralWanderer]

Imperator Fyron: Kaspersky is really, really, really slow at scanning.

Recent versions (2006 onwards) have greatly improved on this, by keeping a checksum of files already scanned so they only get scanned again if their contents change. In most cases, there should be no noticeable slowdown once a full scan has been performed.

Kaspersky does include over 200 unpackers in its scan engine so that will account for slower scan speed compared to many others, but for high-risk Internet users, a better detection rate for encrypted/modified malware (which is the main threat currently) is likely more important. For faster scanning, the likes of NOD32 would be a better choice though NOD32 has itself become slower due to the need to handle more unpackers.