Antivir Antivirus is a German Antivirus and was one of the original free antivirus programs. The program has alot of advanced features including the ability to set the sensitivity of the company’s unique heuristic protection and a priority startup feature.  Free AntiVir also includes free always on protection.

AntiVir Installation:

The program file is only 22 megabytes and downloads quickly.  Unfortunately, you have to register to use Free AntiVir and you will be prompted with a form during login.  There are a few features that are unique to the installation process.  The first is the AHeAD heuristic protection.

Heuristic protection is the ability to detect viruses without actually having a specific definition file for the virus.  Therefore, it is perfect for undiscovered viruses.   Since the process is based upon inference there may be some false positives.   AntiVir gives the user the option to select either a low, medium, or high heuristic capability, with high having the most false positives yet the highest protection.  The next option unique to AntiVir, is the user can configure how the antivirus starts up on the computer.  The first option is a n ormal start which will allow AntiVir to startup like any other antivirus (not a high priority startup.) The second option is the secure start which will force AntiVir to start before most of the Windows startup processes.  The goal of the secure start is to startup before a potential virus can install itself into memory making a virus cleanup significantly easier. I also liked how AntiVir performed a quick scan after the installation was completed.

AntiVir Interface:

AntiVir presents a very uncluttered yet useful interface.  When a scan is being performed you can see the exact progress and files detected.  This is in contrast to some of the other free antivirus programs reviewed.  In addition, the Resident scanner can be easily tweaked and shows the current process that is being scanned.

Antivirus Updates:

AntiVir has an excellent updating system.  While the initial update was very large, it still downloaded extremely quickly. In fact, the update was downloaded at a speed of 326 kilobytes per second.  This is significantly faster than competing antivirus.  With AVG,  I was only able to download the updates under 10 kilobytes a second.  In addition, the update process with AntiVir is very informative.  The updates are also downloaded and installed automatically and silently.

Scanning and Detection Rates:

The AntiVir scanning process was again a lackluster experience.  My 55 gigabyte operating system partition took over an hour to scan.  Unfortunately, if you want a quickly scanning antivirus you’ll probably want to opt for Kaspersky.  The detection rates of  new viruses were tested by AV-comparatives.org.  For the AntiVir scanning engine, AV-comparatives gave AntiVir an “Advanced” rating.  This was higher than Avast and AVG but on par with Bidefender’s detection rates. In addition, according to Consumer Reports, AntiVir was the highest recommended free antivirus product. Other review sites state that the heuristic capability could be better because the software missed a few more recently released viruses. However, the software is free and still includes even a basic heuristic protection.

Resource Usages:

AntiVir does an excellent job of using the fewest resources possible.  The program idles with only about 900 kilobytes.  When the main interface is open, the program uses about 8 megabytes.  Finally, when a full system scan is started the program uses about 41 megabytes which is also comparable with other free antivirus reviewed.

Extra Features:

Free AntiVir includes several extra features which is amazing for a free antivirus.  The first is on demand scanning of the boot sector.  The boot sector is first and most basic area of a drive not accessible by Windows.  This makes it a perfect place for viruses to hide and has made a resurgence in the last few months.

Free AntiVir also includes a virus definition list so one can check all of the viruses the software has capability of detecting.  I am not aware of another free antivirus that has a search able virus definition list. It’s nice just to do a quick check confirming that a computer has the latest virus definitions.

Annoyances:

Free AntiVir will occasionally display a banner telling you about Conficker and how it can affect your computer.  The banner is a little disturbing and annoying

Pros:

• Gives you a paid antivirus feel
• Quick Updates and Performance
• Can View the Definition List and Manually Scan Boot Sector
• Very informative scans
• An excellent scanning engine
• Quick Automatic Updates
• Generally More automated than most free antivirus
• Has a resident scanner or on access scanning

Cons:

• Annoying Pop-Up banners
• Slow Scan Speed
• Need to Register