List of Free Anti-Viruses, Anti-Malware, Firewalls, and Other Tools

AVG has a free AV also.

Most of these "free" utilities come with "add ons".  These additional programs are typically referred to as PUP's which stands for "Possibly Unwanted Programs".  These programs are not necessarily nefarious… but they do sap resources and can cause significant slow downs on your system.  Besides.  Unless you specifically want them on your computer… they shouldn't be there.  I don't like programs that "sneak" onto my system.

I must say that I'm partial to the free AV products supplied by Microsoft - mostly because of their small footprint and unobtrusive nature.

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I must say that I'm partial to the free AV products supplied by Microsoft - mostly because of their small footprint and unobtrusive nature.

 

Since the release of Windows 7 in Oct 2009, I have been using MSE and Windows Firewall on all my W7 systems, and now with W8, I use Windows Defender and Windows Firewall. And I use them because first and foremost, they work. But I also use them because of their relatively small footprint and unobtrusive nature. The fact they update via Windows Update is a big plus for me.

That said, regardless the anti-malware solution of choice, I always recommend the use of a supplemental scanner just to ensure the primary scanner, or the user didn't let something slip by. I use MBAM for that. And while generally running two anti-malware solutions at the same time is not recommended, MBAM Premium plays well with other programs so I don't have a problem recommending that too.