Hey guys ( and gals )

I've had to re-install Windows in my laptop and I was wondering what are the best softwares that I can install ( free ones ofc, I'm broke right now :P ) to secure my laptop from all threats.

I've already got Avast AV installed. But what would be the best choice for AV, firewall and anti malware softwares that I can use ?

Any suggestions?

Cheers!

8 years ago

Comment has been collapsed.

Recommend installing Prey.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

That seems like a really useful Laptop. Though I hardly ever carry my laptop anywhere. Its a desktop replacement and the bloody thing weighs around 8 kg .... I think ...

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I never understood the use if this kinda software.
First thing I always do after stealing a laptop is making a fresh install.
err... yeah :D

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Avast and avira free are the best choices for free antivirus. I heard kaspersky is also beta testing a free antivirus, it might be good aswell once it's released. And windows' own firewall is also more than enough for most of the home users. Also you can install malwarebytes free and do on demand scans every once in a while. On top of these, install an adblock extension to your browser. Unless you are a reckless user who clicks everything you should be pretty safe.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Yeah, I'm installing Malwarebytes anyway and I always use adblock etc on my browsers. But I wasn't sure about firewalls. Ayway thanks for the suggestions.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Malwareibytes and kaspersky or eset.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Malwarebytes: Anti-Malware and Bitdefender (Free Edition) makes a good combo.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Malwarebytes: Anti-Malware Home Premium and Eset NOD 32 AntiVirus 8.0 works for me.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Avast has worked well for me, and when I did get a virus (before I had avast I had Avira) Malwarebytes worked beautifully to help me get rid of it.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I have them :D. Thanks.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

from time to time scan with dr.web cureit

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Deleted

This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I've been planning to buy Malwarebytes but I'll have to stick with the free version for now. A bit tight on budget currently. :P

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Avast is fine.
You can also try Bit-Defender free.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

BitDefender has been the best antivirus in all tests for several years now (the paid one; the free one is one of the worst and in my experience it is a miracle if you can install and start it on any system, even a freshly installed one), followed by Kaspersky.
Symantec is a decent one too, and it often has coupons on coupon sites that make it the cheapest of the top 5 rated AV software; but if you can afford, get BitDefender.
For free ones, it barely matters which of the three 'A's (avast, avira, AVG) you get, they are roughly the same.

For additional protection, probably Malwarebytes Anti-Malware. The free edition needs manual scanning, the paid one (one-time fee for lifetime key, not yearly like the AV software keys) can do live protection.

Whatever you do, don't use McAffee, Panda, or any ESET stuff. The latter used to be good… over a decade ago. Now they live from self-marketing, like McAffee, but they barely do any actual work other than selling other lab's reports as their own findings. The other two… was never good for anything other than slowing down your computer.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Just out of curiosity, what's wrong with panda. I've been using the free version since it seemed to score good in av test, higher then avast or avg free versions.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Slow as fuck, and has a metric ton of false positivies all the time. For a time it was worse than McAffee, which really is something considering McAffee really is nothing more than marketing and a non-working software.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Thanks for the heads up. I'm getting Avast and Malware bytes.

And yeah, I remember both McAfee and ESET. ESET was my fav around 8 years ago or something when they were new and the less said about McAfee, the better. That thing still gives me nightmare :D

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Wow, this thing still exists? The last time I used SpyBot was around… 2007, I think?

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Same ... lol I was surprised too

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Linux, my friend, Linux is the best security for a computer

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

It's hassle to get games to run on that and they usually run x3 worse.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

in my experience i encountered a lot less games with native Linux support that would be running worse than on Windows. Most of the time it's the other way around meaning on Linux they run better than on Windows. Hell, I even have games that run better on Linux through Wine (Windows emulator) than they do natively on Windows

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I had a game that ran 75fps constantly and under wine it runs like crap at like 26. Yes I updated drivers, everything. This was true for almost everything run under wine.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

i was talking about native support, not about wine. Wine is Wine. and it's not an OS fault developers don't make games for Linux, it's not much harder to do if Linux support is in plans from beginning. Porting over to Linux might take long and cost a lot, but starting to develop for Linux in the beginning won't take as long / cost as much. A lot of modern engines support Linux, unity does. There are a lot of unity games without Linux support which is a shame as engine already supports it, just need to make some fixes to work on Linux, ain't that hard

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Yea Native runs fine in my experience but wine runs like garbage 90% of the time.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

you run as wine or use playonlinux or crossover? on wine itself for me it runs worse than through playonlinux. it has package to make play better

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Tried both, playonlinux would get steam errors. I just get fed up with it and put win 10 back.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

that's kinda a different point of view. vulnerabilities aren't actually any viruses you would need antivirus for like on Windows. Vulnerabilities are mostly a build problems on specific kernels. And as Linux do release everything new written, new things tend to have problems. That's the price of people wanting to try new things before real release or stuff. If you use some distro that's not build from latest beta/alpha releases of applications, most of those vulnerabilities doesn't concern you. Most of hackers tend to target servers, not daily users.
But well, you found an article, good for you. at least you learnt something

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Ahh but I'm talking about my laptop mate. I use Linux mainly for my Work computer ( well, the one that does computer simulation one to be precise ). I have Win 7 here.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

but why go for Windows if you have Linux?

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I like using Linux for work but I prefer my Win 7 for my gaming and personal use. after years of doing it that way, my mind always sees Linux as a work environment :P

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

AVG: Internet Security - Excellent firewall, antispam, web protection and many other. For usual malware (virus, trojan etc.) use Malwarebytes Anti-malware. The best protection software is Aldo your brain. Don't trust magical 100$ gifts and code generators etc. If you need to secure sensitive data (ant type of pr0n you'd like to hide) then use TrueCrypt. For file deleting you may use file shredding, as shredding overwrites file data with null data making it unrecoverable. Have fun, surf pr0n securely.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

lol, thanks for those excellent advice but I don't think anyone but the most gullible ones fall for those dodgy links.

As for AVG, the free version doesn't come with a firewall and I didn't quite like it when I used it in another laptop ( the one I'm typing from to be honest :P )

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

wouldn't touch AVG these days, their latest privacy statement has you agreeing to them selling your browser history and personal information so that they can make money from you using their software.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

You can try what you want but knowing what you install is the key, other wise, you will ''allow'' fake software by your own

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

True. What I'm mostly worried about is some PUP sneaking in when I try to rush through some software installation. I still shudder to think about the amount of trouble I had to go through to remove that araby online stuff that infected my laptop from some software that installed a toolbar.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Sign.

As someone who is firm with malware, coding, and some other stuff, knowledge is the key.
If you got knowledge, you can sleep tight without an AV. Noscript, updated Browser plugins, Adblock and some others will secure you.
Also Sandboxie and a Malwarebytes Scan every now and then :)

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

BitDefender 2016 currently has a promotion 1-computer 6-month license, you can get it for free http://sharewareonsale.com/s/bitdefender-internet-security-sale you still have 2 days, you can try it, if you don't like it you can always uninstall.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Nice! Thnx for linking that.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

nod or kaspersky

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

There is no "best protection". Anti-virus-scanners all have different signatures in their database. You might be lucky and your anti-virus detects whatever you've cought. You might get unlucky and the virus on your pc doesn't get detected, in which case, it's either negligible (there's thousands of viruses out there on your pc and in the internet which are effectively doing nothing, thus, not a thread) or you're in for trouble - like ransomware that encrypts your hard drives files, or the state police trojan horse (just translated, it was / is nasty, for it blocks your desktop and explorer)

In any case, no anti-virus fully protects you. As for a firewall: don't worry about that, your router has one most certainly. In general, software-firewalls aren't that useful today.

The best way is to know your way around a little bit and be aware of the fact that, essentially, the internet connection itself is a liability. Of course the cases in which something finds it's way randomly on your pc is rather rare.
Use adblocks, deactivate / uninstall flash, keep java up to date, if it's needed.

In my experience, when I had an antivirus installed (avast), I had some problems. It found 33 000 viruses etc. on my pc after two months of being installed (and having a clean pc beforehands). I also had problems with anti-viruses (not just avast, but also KIS, Avira) deleting important .exe-files. In my case, I couldn't start and/or fix REUS, for Avast deleted the .exe sometime after 20 hours of game and then decided that it doesn't want to let me download the .exe again.
I've also had the nasty BKA-Trojaner pester me twice in a period of two years while avast was installed.

I'm free of anti-virus software since about two years and honestly, it's been the time when the least trash has found it's way on my pc. I scan once every 6 months or so with two external scanners which I boot via a linux interface, detection rate is satisfactory.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I recommend software like Sandboxie to test programs in a completely isolated environment, Avast free + Malwarebytes to keep it clean, Ccleaner to clean the temporaries, F.lux to protect your eyes at night, AdBlock Plus browser plugin to block advertisements, and a script like the following to firewall block any specific folder from internet access:

echo off
@setlocal enableextensions
@cd /d "%~dp0"
set location=%cd%
FOR /r %%G in (".exe",".dll",".cmd",".bat",".sh",".js",) Do (@echo %%G
NETSH advfirewall firewall add rule name="0Blocked Dir %cd%" dir=in program="%%G" action="block" enable="yes")
FOR /r %%G in (".exe",".dll",".cmd",".bat",".sh",".js",) Do (@echo %%G
NETSH advfirewall firewall add rule name="0Blocked Dir %cd%" dir=out program="%%G" action="block" enable="yes")
del "FirewallBlockFolder.bat"

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

The first half of the message I understood.

But when you reached the script part, "Swoosh" ... It flew over my head. But thanks for the tips :P

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

It's relatively easy, you just open notepad, copy paste that entire text starting with echo and then save the text with the file name FirewallBlockFolder and after that rename that text file from FirewallBlockFolder.txt to FirewallBlockFolder.bat so you change it's extension. You now have a script and when you want to block a folder's access to the internet copy the FirewallBlockFolder.bat file inside the respective folder and right click the FirewallBlockFolder.bat file and select "Run as administrator", done folder firewalled. ;)

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Deleted

This comment was deleted 1 year ago.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Since TrueCrypt is not more, I suggest you VeraCrypt to secure your data.
Better safe than sorry.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

You do not need anything. Just do not use cracks, do not open suspicious attachments that anyone send you thru mail.
And then you will be good.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Use both Windows and Linux.

Windows for gaming.
Linux for all other stuff.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I used adwcleaner just a few hours ago to finish removing a malware and I've gotta say it's better than I expected. I recommend it.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Closed 8 years ago by CheeseTuber.