Comparison of free antivirus for Windows XP, Vista and 7

In comparison to version 8 which we tested in our previous comparison of free antivirus programs, this version 9 of Avira AntiVir Personal FREE Antivirus is, according to the makers, more secure, faster to detect viruses and easier to configure. We notice that very few changes have been made to the interface and that the applications takes up only 12MB when resting as a background tasks, and no more the 20 MB in total, which is rather reasonable when compared to most current computer hardware configurations.

Avira AntiVir Personal with their Guard module constantly analyses your files by running as a background task on your PC, hunting out viruses, Trojan Horses, worms and diallers, then intervening when required. The program is cut into three panels, with the View tab providing you with the machines status, allows you to activate or disable the antivirus, to update the search engine and virus definition files and to read or print the event logs. It is also here where you will have access to "Luke Filewalker" a scan of all system drives (a task which takes up 70MB in total), and all file types (executables, archives …).

If a threat is discovered, then it is always possible to refer to the recognition list which provides a full description about the virus (name, discovery date, type, in circulation or not …) if you want to know more about it. The Local Protection tab allows you to control your drives on a case by case basis, the active processes and Windows system folder… It isn’t possible though to perform a scan on a network location. Finally, the last tab titled Administration brings together all of your quarantined files and the task scheduler (updates, full system control …).

This is an effective antivirus for basic security, although it doesn’t have any dedicated modules for emails (POP and SMTP) which is rather unfortunate. The instant messaging and web shields are available but only in the commercial version. One thing we noticed though is that if you correctly configure the Guard search engine with the parental control option of limiting writing to files, then there is a good chance you will be able to stop a threat in the same way as a web shield.

Creator: Avira
Compatibility: Windows XP, Vista, 7, 32 and 64 bits support of Windows versions
Version: 9.0.0.72
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