The best free anti-virus software

Your Antivirus Solution
At last i found a free antivirus program that works well. I have been dissapointed with some mainstream anti-virus programs so i decided to invetigate other offerings. Initially i found a free one which i tried out and to my horror it messed up all my Internet settings. (I did not do my homework on this one). After installing it i was unable to use my browser at all. I had to restore my XP system to a previous restore point.
Always do your homework.
If you run Windows XP, it is a good idea to create restore points before installing new programs (especially if you think it might be dodgy). Then when things go wrong you can always restore back to this point. This has saved me a couple of times!

Enter Avast free antivirus
So i searched some more, read recommendations from forums. You can always find good informatiom at forums. Well that is how i discovered Avast. This time i did my homework. I did more research on Avast. I used search enigines and forums to gather more information. All in all it took me about 45 minutes. All the ratings were positive. I downloaded Avast, installed it. Everything went smoothly. Your registration code is sent to your inbox. Just copy and paste into the dailog box. Ok the Avast car-radio like interfrace is rather clumsy. You can change the appearance of the user-interface by selecting a diffrent skin. Avast comes with online help, which will tell you most of what you need to know.
Get Avast Here : Avast Free Antivirus Download
Commercial and business users Please go here
Here are some user comments
Comment 1
"Unlike NAV, Panda, PC-Cillin, etc. Avast doesn't try to take over your computer under the mistaken impression that it should own your PC. Unlike McAfee, Avast uses few resources, is very fast, and doesn't crash if your PC is on for a couple of days. I have tested every freeware package and Avast beats them all. It also beats most commercial packages for speed, low resource utilization, reliability, and most importantly, virus detection. There are only a couple of commercial applications I think are better (Kapersky, NOD) but Avast is FREE! I own several commercial AV packages, but I keep coming back to free Avast."
Comment 2
"One of the best antivirus software around. It seems to be quite reliable with its regular automatic online updates of virus definitions (sometimes twice a day). I switched to Avast from Norton which took more of my computer resources than this program. Avast has very unusual but convenient interface. I have checked this app with several testing tools and it has passed all the exams. I have already been using Avast during several months and the only negative remark I can make is that scanning of my HDD (20 GB on one partition) takes quite time."
Comment 3
"This is the best antivirus I have tried. It has features like webshield, network shield, p2p shield, IM shield, Outlook shield, and an AUTOMATIC customizable Email Shield. Plus the standard on-access protection. Updates? Automatic Increnental updates. only 5kb definitions a time. Before two weeks avast did 16 definition updates in a week. Takes about 18 mb when all features are enabled. But you may turn off some to free some mb. you will notice that processes are closed . But it takes no CPU at all. It has skins as well The pro version just adds a script blocker. You may try script trap for this. The developers even suggested free script blockers that work with avast home edition. If you want to support the Alwil team or if you running avast under a commercial company, then you have to buy the Pro version. But avast lacks of heuristic technology for standard shield. However there is proactive scanning integrated with email shield. This is to minimize false positives. The new version, will hopefully have proactive scanning for all files "
Get Avast for greater protection

Stops unwanted intrusions on your PC
Daily updates and scans
Protects you from viruses,trojans,worms,dialers,adware and spyware

If you need antivirus for your business and commercial use, then
consider avast! 4 professional