A good lightweight Virus scanner / Internet Security

Hello to everyone, just made an account here cause I had some questions.

I still use XP on some computers, but I'm curious about AV-software. At this moment I use none, only brain.exe Also have Mbam installed, but that is only on demand scanning, and not actually a virus scanner.

On older systems I stopped using Virus Scanners (like DOS, Windows 9x and W2k), but XP is still very common and still a risk getting some malicious software.

And than there is a problem, some modern Anti Virus Software is still capable to run on XP, but under what performance costs. I tried some, and was shocked about the decrease of performance. When working on a single Core machine whit only 512mb installed, it could take ages to boot and after that working is almost impossible. Checking used memory reveals a usage of more than installed. So the machine is continuously swapping. But even on more powerful machines it's not doable.

I run XP on a Pentium III-s 1400 512mb, Pentium M 745 1.8ghz 1.5 gb(laptop) and a Core2Duo 2.0Ghz 2gb. Mostly for games and older software.

So does someone know a good software?

 

not sure how your performance will suffer, but I am using 360 Total Security Essentials by qiho

works well for me, but I have 2gb memory

 

I changed over to 360 total security. AVG turned computer into a total slug, , , ,

 

Aha, that one i never heard of. First I thought that the 360 is from Norton/Symantec, but this is a different one.

I'll give it a try, also de difference between the essentials and the normal edition could be interesting.

 

@Roman78, I use essentials because I do not want 360 updating my programs and checking my system and whatever else it does,

I do that myself, but its a great realtime antivirus, as long as you use both the bitdefender and the avira engines, and I use Malwarebytes free as an on demand scanner.

 

You can turn a lot of stuff off with 360's menu. I think its chinese. AVG I think is czechoslovakian. Quite a few av progs are foreign

just wiki'd & got this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_antivirus_software

-c-

 

@cornemuse, interesting article, just did not have a column for OS.

 

360 wont work with xp 64 bit. I have avast for that. I have 360 on my tosh laptop with W-7. I like the way 360 manages the various upgrades, on another (7) forum, most posts seem to be about problems with u/g;s, and bILL satan gATES notorious blue screen o' death.

-c-

 

from here

I have 32 bit so I cannot test this.

 

A good manual scanner is WinClam. (but has active no shield. Not quite fully useful)

 

@Frattulman I also tested WinClam, I like it, because it's small an does not interfere operating, but when I started a scan it's also consuming more that the installed 512 Meg. Need at least 1 Gb.

 

So, I installed 360 Total Security Essentials on a virtual XP test machine whit 512mb of ram.

First impression: Looks nice, Memory usage: 3 processes whit a total of 68.888 MB used. Wile scanning it goes up to 130-140 MB. Still good performance. Total memory used (including Windows of course) is about 260-270MB wile scanning and about 170 when not . But this is only a small scan.

Cons: Not usable at 800x600, need at least 900 pixels width.

But something I don't understand at this point is, on the main program window I could enable Bitdefender and/or Avira, why is that for?

 

@Roman78: read through the following, it is a choice to use all engines (increased memory usage) and to choose the protection mode desired, I have 2gb of ram so I use all engines.

https://malwaretips.com/threads/avira-bitdefender-disabled.57236/
https://malwaretips.com/threads/wha...you-recommend-if-could-only-choose-one.56217/
https://malwaretips.com/threads/do-not-have-to-enable-the-avira-engine.56149/
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2422024,00.asp

there are lots of reviews at below search page if you wish to research more:

https://www.google.com/search?biw=1...ved=0ahUKEwjCiJK6sdDPAhXDez4KHdzEBdsQvwUIGygA

 

When I attempted to install 360 on xp-64, I got a message 'does not support this os'(words to that effect)

 

shall I try to research it further??

 

Not for me, , , ,

 

okey dokey, cornemuse.