Antivirals and Malware removal tools cost, and no one’s rich…so here’s how to do it for free.

Malicious software (be they viruses, rootkits, trojans, worms, or malware) are so prevalent it’s ridiculous. An additional fact, 85% of attacks come via the internet.

I’ve looked at Avast 6.0 and Avira and concluded that Avira is the better of the two. The “sandboxing” in Avast is spotty and not automatic. Also, Avast doesn’t fully remove viruses.

The biggest minus Avira has? No email and no “real time” scanning.

Therefore, I’d recommend Avira’s AV software if you’re going “free”. Just remember its shortcomings.

There are other tools that can help in the fight to have a virus/malware-free system:

CCleaner

Another free tool, CCleaner does two things incredibly well: Cleans the Windows registry and removes cached web data. There are a lot of registry cleaners available, but CCleaner is the one I trust. I highly recommend always doing a backup of the registry when using CCleaner to take care of this task. Fortunately CCleaner has a built-in tool to do that. An alternative is FCleaner.

Combofix

Combofix is a “first line of defense” tool to use when infestation is suspected.

Combofix will remove: Malware, Rootkits, Trojans, Worms, and Viruses.

The single most important issue with Combofix is that you can not run it with an antivirus tool enabled. If you have AVG, before running Combofix you have to uninstall it completely. It’s also best to run Combofix with the computer in safe mode.

Only download Combofix from Bleeping Computer or ForoSpyware.

Malwarebytes

People are always surprised to find out they need anti-spyware as well as anti-virus protection. Malwarebytes seems to be the most effective.  Malwarebytes comes in two versions: Free and Paid. The biggest difference is the Paid version has a real-time scanner built in. The free version must be run manually. So… save $25 and scan once a day. 

Microsoft Security Essentials

After using so many different anti-virus tools, the one tool that seems to work nearly as well as any other, without any attached cost, is Microsoft Security Essentials. It’s not rated as highly as the “Pay fors” but it works and I have’nt had problems with it.

Not only will this anti-virus tool work well to help prevent infection, it does so with as little drain on the system.

As for Comodo’s Internet Security Suite 5.3? Not so hot because it falls down on malware and has many false positives with viruses.

Threatfire Antivirus

PC Tools ThreatFire provides behavior-based protection to guard against new and unknown threats which signature-based scanners might otherwise miss. I like this software a good deal because of that.

ThreatFire runs in the background, monitoring each programs actions, quarantining programs it knows to be bad and alerting on those it considers suspicious. This is almost ideal imo.

ThreatFire runs alongside installed antivirus or other security software just great, making it an ideal addition to existing protection because, face it: No one antivirus/Malware has perfect ratings, and many conflict if installed together.

I use Threatfire with MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials), and scan daily with Malwarebytes.