What are some good (free) antivirus and protection programs for PC?

[Agent D.]

My dad is on a mission to ruin a brand new laptop he just bought, and I need to prevent this because I'm not wasting another 400 bucks on a laptop because he of his stupidity and stubborness to do the correct thing. I need something that will prevent him from opening contaminated crap, especially since his stupid fucking ass won't stop using internet explorer. Honestly, I'd like to just take the laptop and sell it so he doean't lose money, but he needs it for "programming" certain devices like vc codecs, sound matrixes, and other similar items. I use the term programming loosely because it mostly requires an rs232 connection or a straight network connection to push programming from the laptop, which is usually just sent from another company or the device manufacturer.

Anything suggested is appreciated.

[Bytor]

I have been using this site for years, always had good luck with their recommendations

[Yoda]

I've been spybot search and destroy, malwarebyte anti-malware, and avg.

I haven't had any issues and my lappy runs fine and you KNOW I visit some very blue sites.

[Agent D.]

I've been spybot search and destroy, malwarebyte anti-malware, and avg.

I haven't had any issues and my lappy runs fine and you KNOW I visit some very blue sites.

That was exactly what I used on my pc before I gave up on it. Don't get me wrong, not saying they didn't work, it's just my pc was in a bad way before I got it.

Turns out his friend is gonna set him up with a security suite from I think he said eset or something along those lines. He swears by it, so whatever, let them have at it.

[MeshGearFox]

I used Avast and Avira on various systems. Avira has a once-a-night pop-up ad in the free version so I prefer Avast. They're both reputable though.

My experience with AVG was that it was a memory hog with a rather poor detection rate. Although maybe the detection rate was fine, I don't know, it tended to kill my system whenever I did virus scans so I had to disable a lot of stuff.

[TiamatNM]

Avast is great, I've been using it for years

[FlamingR1ft]

Agree on Avast. I also use Spybot and MalwareBytes. Never had any issues with my pc (as far as I know, anyway :P).

[Agent D.]

Thanks for the input guys, you basically reinforced my own opinion on what I should use. I'm set for when (if) I get a new gaming pc now. The old man and his buddy can play with the laptop all they like.

[Sagacious-T]

Ad-Aware is another good one

www.lavasoft.com

[Klutz64]

I fell in love with Avira to the point that I keep the $50 premium version on my computer. And I keep MWB in the rare case that something does get through.