Any free anti-virus that work well?

[rans6andrew]

For the last part of last week we were beset with email issues, again. My partner found that she could neither receiver nor send emails or use Mailwasher to sift the cr@p from the wanted. My incoming and Mailwashing was working OK but I was unable to send any out. We had different error messages to each other.

As we had been having some email issues with our pop server for about a month and the sys op failed to explain what he had been changing in the setup we were not surprised. I think we have been through every combination of secure password/encrypted emails that our Thunderbird browser can handle in the last few weeks so I decided that enough was enough and I moved our email service back to a paid for service with proper support.

While trying to find out what was happening we gleaned that the old service would be cut off in the new year anyway as the major (only!) other user was changing his business over to Gmail.

That was when we found out that the issues of unable to send and receive were not caused by the pop server. After messing about all day on Friday I finally pinned the blame on Avast free anti-virus. It had performed some sort of update beyond the normal AV definitions and messed up everything. Once I uninstalled it we were up and running properly.

This is a shame, we had already been around the trials and tribulations of AVG before ditching that. AVG seemed to work but it made both machines it was put on run SSSOOOO SSLLLLOOOOOOWWWLY that it was often difficult to tell if they were still accessing the world wide wait.

What else might be worth a go?

Thanks,

Rans6............................

[lomapaseo]

Your cause and effect may not be valid (bad antivirus program) instead you might consider troubleshooting for other possibilities than the ant-virus program itself.

[rans6andrew]

I have tried a number of other avenues, even disabling the Windies firewall but when one of the error messages insists that the "server intentionally terminated the action" when trying check incoming emails it smacks of some sort of firewall/anti-virus/blockage. The problems are on two different generations of Windies and Avast did update more than usual on the Thursday morning that the problems started.

Thanks for your suggestions, though, perhaps you could be more explicit regarding "other possibilities". I am open to offers still.

Rans6........

[Phileas Fogg]

YES ...

Go to comodo dot com then to "free downloads" and select their anti-virus

I've been using it for years, it's really good, during download/installation be careful to deselect all the add on's such as firewall, default search engine blah blah blah and you'll be OK

[Booglebox]

MS Security Essentials.

[SPIT]

I have been using AVAST FREE ANTI VIRUS for some years now and I have not had any trouble.
(PS its on the web)

[rans6andrew]

Avast has gone wrong like this before. It was gurgling for our problems that brought up many tales of Avast causing the same issues and so I un-installed it and email started working properly.

Rans6.........

[TWT]

I second Booglebox,MS Security Essentials is good,used it on a different system to the one I have now.

I use Avira at the moment,haven't had any issues with it.

[Mad Monk]

Sophos seems to work well for me.

[Deaf Tortoise]

Another vote for Avira. Used it for a few years now without any problems.

[BigEndBob]

Do broadband suppliers have there own anti virus because we have been with XLN at work for six years and only one virus 'as ever appeared on our works computer?
Some Russian guy created 'is own home page and the only solution was to deny the user through the properties and security page. Then all fine and got removed using Zone Alarms which I have used the last 3 years.