Free firewall and antivirus software

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Wondered what everybody's thoughts were on the freeware or open source type antivirus or firewall software out there. I have been using Avast! antivirus for about a month now. It seems ok, but sometimes is a memory hog. I've also been using Comodo firewall, which has run good for the most part and has logged all kinds of application errors and port scans and has blocked them. Anybody else use any other free or open source antivirus or firewall software?

sprkymrk

Open Source stuff I use includes ClamAV (which is also available for Windows now) and Firestarter (firewall) which is pretty nice, though it has not been updated in over a year now. If you know IP Tables fairly well you don't really need another solution for Open Source. Most of the products just provide a front end GUI to IP Tables.

I haven't tried any free AV stuff, but of the firewalls I used in the past that are free include Sygate Personal Firewall (SPF) which is very good and has a small footprint, and of course the very popular Zone Alarm. Of the 2 I liked SPF better.

bighornsheep

zonealarm firewall is alright, I like how it detects activities and then you could choose what to allow/deny.

For anti-virus, I've always purchased Nortan, it's cheap, and it works well. Sorry a little bit off track from your requests.

btw, did you check with your ISP? I've learnt recently that my ISP actually gives Nortan Internet security, antifire, and personal firewall for free.

DirtySouth

I've been using AVG for anti-virus and Zone Alarm for firewall. I especially like AVG because it's not so much of a resource hog like Norton was and it seems to get the job done.

My only problem with AVG is I can't seem to figure out where the heck you disable the auto-scan at system startup!! Usually those types of things are easy to find in "Preferences/Settings" or something.

blargoe

ZoneAlarm is also a good tool for troubleshootinig a machine that has been hijacked when your normal malware tools just aren't quite getting it, because it logs exactly which executable is trying to access the internet and where it is located on the filesystem. I had a hijacked explorer.exe a couple years ago that I never would have figured out if it hadn't been for ZoneAlarm, the only fix was to replace it with another copy form the the Windows CD.

jescab

I usa AVG for my virus scan........and I LOVE IT

double click the AVG icon on your desktop then left click scheduler.....
double click on test plan in basic mode > put a check in the box next to periodically start schedule scan > then input the tiem you want to schedule a complete scan......uncheck "if missed start immediately upon computer restart"..... then you should be good to go........