Free anti-virus software for WinXp

[vodhner at cox.net]

We're using Avast on two machines, and it seems to be pretty good.  It updates frequently.  We (myself, wife, several kids) are very conservative users and have never been hit by a virus in 20 years of heavy computing, in spite of being without anti-virus software most of that time.  So I'm no expert on viruses.  But my wife did have an email intercepted by Avast that had a risky-looking attachment.

Core Force looks intriguing, thanks Josef.  I intend to try it as my security suite when I install XP in a virtual machine under Linux in the near future.  I note the web site specifies Win2k and XP but doesn't mention Vista.  My wife's new laptop runs Vista, and I will probably install Avast when our free Norton coverage wears out.

I had two bad experiences in past years with AVG.  Once it seemed to simply lock up the machine, and removing AVG cleared up the problem.  I went with no virus protection for some time after that, then tried AVG again.  This time it seemed OK for a while, but then suddenly it started declaring all applications to be infested!  I was able to fight my way down to the control panel and uninstall it, and all was well.  This was two or three years ago.

If I were to decide to pay for virus coverage, I think I'd go with F-Secure out of appreciation for their sounding the alarm on the Sony CD trojan while the other "establishment" anti-virus outfits were ignoring it.

About two years ago I got a free PC-Cillin subscription when I bought a new motherboard; it updated frequently and did claim to catch one virus.  After some months the free subscription ran out, and I went directly to Avast.

Vic