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My Norton antivirus wants me to pay for a subscription service. This annoys me. So I am now looking for a good, free antivirus program. Does anyone here have any suggestions.

you could also uninstall completely and delete the entire Norton branch in the registry, then restart the computer and reinstall -> another whole year of free subscription

Just suck up your pride and pay it. From what I know, the free ones are nowhere near as good as the ones that you pay for.

If it's an older version, you could just go and get a newer copy, thereby getting a one year subsription.

Why pay when you can plunder and pillage?

Anyway I just checked and you can get Systemworks 2003 for about 10 dollars (that's a 50 dollar discount) which is basically Antivirus + Utilities, and with super-saving shit you don't even have to pay shipping. Systemworks 2004 is about 100 dollars (direct purchase from the Symantec store) while NAV 2004 is about 20 and 50 dollars respectively, from Amazon and Symantec.

But I'm not sure if your subscription will renew if you install a fresher one. In any case I would recommend wiping the Norton registry tree.

I use AVG Antivirus from Grisoft.

When I updated Norton 2001 to 2003, I got a free one year subscription built in.

Subscription isn't that much, and if you don't like it there are always alternatives from other places.

I have Norton Corporate at home, I got a CD when one of my companies tanked and we where throwing software away.

With that said, I think it is worth it to purchase certain softwares should you need them. I have my own copies of Ghost, Partition Magic, etc.

Dalton wrote:I use AVG Antivirus from Grisoft.

AVG is what I use, too.

That's a Supermod and a 1337 H4x0r's endorsement.

Well, lots of people seem to recommend AVG, but almost all the "professional" reviews I can find trash it. Is it true that it adds an ad for Grisoft to every outgoing e-mail?

Johonebesus wrote:Well, lots of people seem to recommend AVG, but almost all the "professional" reviews I can find trash it. Is it true that it adds an ad for Grisoft to every outgoing e-mail?

Uh...no?

I've got Norton 2001 and it came with a free year's subscription, and the price to renew it was quite low. The program its self has not yet allowed through a single virus.

Johonebesus wrote: Is it true that it adds an ad for Grisoft to every outgoing e-mail?

It optionally can add "This email certified virus-free by AVG" or somesuch.

I use AVG and have no problems with it. I've seen it successfully detect and remove several of the recent big news viruses. Seems OK with Win98,NT,2K and XP

Yeah, I just used it to clean out a copy of Swen that made it onto my system (I downloaded an attachment to scan it to see what virus it was, and System Restore cached it )

Dalton wrote:Yeah, I just used it to clean out a copy of Swen that made it onto my system (I downloaded an attachment to scan it to see what virus it was, and System Restore cached it )

Stupid system restore. It always likes to pick a bad moment to cache the HDD, like when you're doing surgery on a virus One of these days I'm sure we'll see a virus that activates the SR caching while the virus is still running, then induces a system restore back to that point if an AV tries to attack it...

System Restore is the main reason I don't use ME or XP, but rather 2000.

Crayz9000 wrote:System Restore is the main reason I don't use ME or XP, but rather 2000.

I use 2K as well, not just because of the lack of SR, but the fact I can tweak every last drop of blood (FPS in Quake) outta this damn 400mhz P2 Turnip I'm saddled with. Bonus: Tweaking for Speed is quite conducive to Security as well.

System Restore is more trouble than it's worth.

At least for me.

(At work, it's a godsend)

I switch it off.

Well, you've convinced me. I'll try the AVG. If I get infected with a really nasty bug and my computer gets destroyed, I'll hold Dalton and Einhander personally responsible (after I get through cussing out Symantec. I damned well do not want to pay $20 for the privilege of getting virus definitions so the program which I already paid for will remain usable. I didn't have to do that with the old McAfee on my old computer. Whatever happened to the concept of pleasing the customer? Why is every company making it less and less desirable to do business with them?)

Johonebesus wrote:Well, you've convinced me. I'll try the AVG. If I get infected with a really nasty bug and my computer gets destroyed, I'll hold Dalton and Einhander personally responsible (after I get through cussing out Symantec.

I dunno about Dalton, but if your comp goes titsup despite AVG, you can come to my house and get your payback however you see fit. Yes, I'll supply the lube.

Johonebesus wrote:Well, you've convinced me. I'll try the AVG. If I get infected with a really nasty bug and my computer gets destroyed, I'll hold Dalton and Einhander personally responsible (after I get through cussing out Symantec. I damned well do not want to pay $20 for the privilege of getting virus definitions so the program which I already paid for will remain usable. I didn't have to do that with the old McAfee on my old computer. Whatever happened to the concept of pleasing the customer? Why is every company making it less and less desirable to do business with them?)

Well, AVG is nice, but it's not always effective at removing viruses (Grumbles something nasty about MSBlast . . . which I had to remove myself through command.com), and tends to be kinda crippled in terms of features offered by the free version.