I was using MSSE until recently, but it refused to remember an allowed object and stopped a game working everytime the laptop was rebooted.

I switched over to Bit Defender Free, but the interface and nagging to upgrade is annoying as hell. 

What's the free AV du jour?

I still use Avast, as I have for quite a number of years. It's not as slim and transparent as it used to be but I think it still comes out top amongst the pack.

When I plumped for BitDefender I did have a quick look at some 'independent' anti virus rating place, and MSSE, AVG and Avast were all pretty low down the list for actually finding stuff. Although saying that, I've never had a problem while using MSSE apart from it refusing to remember to allow a certain hacked file.

and yet:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/AV-TEST-Certification-Security-Essentials-Double-Failure-0-Day,news-42157.html


Edit: Which proves nothing but clearly was meant to in my hungover state. these might be more useful:

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-anti-virus-software.htm

http://antivirus.about.com/od/freeantivirussoftware/tp/freeantivirus.htm

http://www.av-comparatives.org/

I use both avg and avast (on different pc's). dunno what the difference is, they both are free and get frequent updates. I think I got annoyed with avg for some reason.

Ta, I'll check those links out. I know MSSE failed a bunch of tests, but it does stop windows moaning that you have no AV do it fulfilled my requirements!

I used to use AVG, but I fell out with it too. Can't remember why, possibly because of the bloat.

That's strange I use bitdefender and it's never nagged me. Have you registered it?

Registered the free version, it pops up every logon to tell me I should pay for the premium One. And it keeps nagging me to do a system scan. I don't want to so a system scan, my system is fine :@

I just turn the nagging off. I seem to occasionally get viruses at about the same rate whether I use AV or not. So I avoid the performance hit and just don't bother.

I should probably just do that. I can't remember the last time I actually got a virus, or even an alert (that wasn't a false positive from a keygen or something). It was possibly the time I was trying to diagnose what was infecting another computer and instead of right clicking the file I'd extracted I double clicked and ran it by mistake :$

:D

<claps>

Are you sure you downloaded the right thing?  I just got this for my brother in law and saw this.  And I know I've never seen a single nag screen about anything, and I've used this for at least 6 months now.

That doesn't look like what it gave me :|

You know what I think I've recently done the same as Kos.

I got bit defender a while back for another PC that looked like that picture but the one that I recently downloaded was labelled bit defender 2009 or something and nagged and didn't look the same.

I smell something fishy (nj).

Yup, 2009 free trial edition. I had a look on the wbesite this morning and that's the only one you can download for free (unless 2013 is super well hidden...)

But I definitely downloaded the one Ken attached a few months ago.

Very strange. I downloaded 2013 from this link (found on the BitDefender forum), but it'll only give me a 30 day trials :|

The one I downloaded previously I think you had to register then it was free for a year or something. It does seem like a struggle to find the actual download.

That's the process I went through 2 weeks ago and it gave me 2009 :|