Recommend Me Some Virus Protection Per Favore

[Admiral Yi]

And also, how the hell do I kill that fucking McAfee popup that only gives me the choices of "renew" and "later?"

[PRC]

McAfee, just uninstall with prejudice. 

If you're paying for it, ESET is a good program.  $80 a year, but they have bulk year buying deals.  It works well, is customizable for the things you want to allow like remote access or something like this. 

[Barrister]

Windows Defender, built into your OS, works just fine.  Made by Microsoft and free!

[Arvoreen]

I'll second Windows defender.  That's all I use now.  The rest all seem overly bloated and pieces of crap.  I even paid for Malware Anti-Bytes full suite for a while and it was just massive resource hog/didnt ever seem to work right with Windows 10. 

I will grant I may be biased, and my Windows 10 install was strangely screwed up. (Probably some combination of Windows 7 -> 10 upgrade and the install/uninstall of various iterations of Visual Studio, which manifested as all sorts weird shit like some strange process spawn that would just sit and chew CPU in the background (related to creative labs something or other).  Re-installing from scratch solved a lot of that, but I haven't gone back and reloaded anything other than Windows Defender.

[Admiral Yi]

  How do I check to see if my version of Windows has Defender and do you need to activate or is it always running?

Haven't uninstalled in yonks.  Is it through control panel?

[CountDeMoney]

McAfee, just uninstall with prejudice. 

If you're paying for it, ESET is a good program.  $80 a year, but they have bulk year buying deals.  It works well, is customizable for the things you want to allow like remote access or something like this.

I liked ESET, but it was pretty expensive; I found WebRoot SecureAnywhere to be just as versatile, cheaper and it hasn't conflicted with anything at all; piggbacking that with Piriform stuff, and I've been happy.

I don't trust Windows Defender.  I don't trust Windows anything.  An entire global underground hacker economy is based on designing exploits for all things Windows...and people actually think its built-in stuff is safe?

[viper37]

And also, how the hell do I kill that fucking McAfee popup that only gives me the choices of "renew" and "later?"

Free (one of these, not all):
#1- Bitdefender.  Good anti-virus, no pop-ups. 
#2: Pandora free, no pop-ups, but lags a bit behind in terms of an easy to use interface.
#3: Avast.  Solid detection ratio, better than the above 2.  More than a fuckton of pop ups with a very loud sound so you can hear it even if you fell asleep in front of your computer.

If you use your computer casually, a free av will be just fine.  I have a free av on my HTPC and it's ok.  I had free AV in the office, but then one of the secretary infected my entire network, so I switched to Eset on 5 devices.


Paid:
#1 Eset Smart Security, firewall and anti-virus and anti-theft and anti stuff you will never know how to use but still good to have
#2 Eset NOD 32, Anti-virus only, use Windows firewall.
#3 Kaspersky.  Very good anti-virus, average and complicated firewall.


Anti-spyware free:
#1:  Super antispyware.  No pop ups, good detection of tracing cookies.
#2:  Malware bytes: less detection of tracing cookies, supposedly better detection of dangerous spywares, lots of annoying pop ups.

I do not recommend paying for spyware protection for a single computer.
But if you get frequently infected by crap, you might consider paying for Hitman Pro, it acts as a secondary on-demand virus&spyware scan.  It will also delete some tracking cookies.

[viper37]

How do I check to see if my version of Windows has Defender and do you need to activate or is it always running?

Haven't uninstalled in yonks.  Is it through control panel?

don't use Defender.  Every time you use Defender, a kitten dies.  And that makes CdM unhappy.

No, seriously, it's not that good.  It's about average.  It used to be worst, but it's still not as good as the top players.

[Admiral Yi]

Loaded Bitdefender, uninstalled McAfee.  Thanks everyone.

[Admiral Yi]

I left Bitdefender system scan on all night and it says it's 4% done.  Am I doing it wrong? 

[viper37]

I left Bitdefender system scan on all night and it says it's 4% done.  Am I doing it wrong? 

what kind of system to you have?  I only have a 256gb ssd so it's pretty quick.
But if you have an older computer with an older drive, the first scan could be very long.  Though that seems exagerated...

[Admiral Yi]

911 gb of which 719 free.

[viper37]

911 gb of which 719 free.

definately not normal behavior.  Though I expect it is done now?  If not, something is really wrong.  I'd suggest deinstalling it, rebooting, reinstall, reboot, restart the scan. If it's still so slow, than try Panda Anti-virus:
http://www.pandasecurity.com/canada-fr/homeusers/solutions/free-antivirus/?ref=menu

[Admiral Yi]

Though I expect it is done now?

I stopped the scan at 4%.

[viper37]

Though I expect it is done now?

I stopped the scan at 4%.

Well, you should let it complete.  The first scan is always longer.