My wife has an old, cranky XP box that she uses as our “second” computer. For some reason it won’t accept any of the usual freebie antivirus programs such as Avira, Avast, or AVG. She can’t even run freebie scans from TrendMicro or Panda. And the few programs she has successfully installed, such as ClamWin, are useless. Because of her infrequent surfing habits and our stunning financial problems, we don’t want to buy a program of any sort.
Anyone have a suggestion as to a free antivirus program that might function on her cranky old XP machine and actually function?
Doug, thanks for the recommend. I don’t think I have the Windows CD or auth info, so I might not be able to prove ownership of Windows to the program’s satisfaction.
I can’t believe AVG won’t run for you. Did Microsoft Security Essentials work? It sounds like you are in a real bind with your OS version and the lack of your renewal information. Keep this thread active and there will eventually be someone who can help you. Have you tried a trial version of something so you could at least see if there is anything that would work with your older OS?
If the PC is just being used to surf, and there’s no reliance on any particular applications, might be an idea to switch it to ubuntu or similar. It’ll squeeze a bit more performance out of it without needing an anti-virus at all.
That is very poor advice. You absolutely need AV software…especially for Windows…and especially for a surfing machine.
@Black Max: Try running malwarebytes and spybot. If you aren’t able to install or run AV software, chances are good that it’s been infected by something.
My bank gave me a copy of Kaspersky for free and it’s done a far better job than AVG did over the years (I picked up a number of viruses while running AVG, but have had nothing in the six months of using Kaspersky).
I have been using XP version of windows for more than 4-5 years. In my past experience I used many antivirus softwares like Avira, Avast, Kaspersky, Panda and many more but somehow my windows got crushed every time. I am a Freelance Designer and I have to surf through the web for downloading images, getting new ideas, and many others things. A friend of mine suggest me to use Symentec antivirus and I follow his advice and now I am free of all kind of issues. There are many other antivirus software with specifications on the link described bellow:
If that isn’t an option, then I’d recommend Kaspersky. You can get a free 30-day trial to make sure it will run on your machine before you spend any money on it. We used it on Windows XP and were very happy with it.
As far as I can recall, XP didn’t have Security Essentials, or if it did, there was no anti-virus included. I can’t check, as we no longer have that machine, so I could be havering.
At first, I used avast antivirus and for home use, it is free; it is as an effective antivirus software. But now I switched over to Microsoft security essentials which can be run on old windows xp versions (it will not validate your OS) with poor PC specifications. I find it better than avast anti virus…
yes i have a suggestion
i have it olso on my 7 years old laptop
and it is legal but it seems that they remove my coment on u tread ( dont no why )
so i wil give it up til they restore my frist coment
but have another great tip for u
same like what i did before with my old laptop xp
put the orginel windows cd insite
run it so that every thing wil be restore to it orginel
including the free antivirus ( demo)
so is u laptop olso so fast as it whas in the beginning ( and all the errors and regis and virus wil be delet)
Dont forget to make a backup from the things what u like to save ( like favor ,emails,pics,videos,docu and so on)
i stil have my 3 cd from my old laptop and dhave fore free 6 months antivirus on it
i know the software is many years old
but it wil update to the new antivirus .
but ofcours now i just have mcfee on my laptop
olso for 6 months free
I recommend Microsoft security essentials but you will have to install Service Pack 3 for XP and then you can download this antivirus. All you need is the Internet connection and you will find this antivirus your full and final solution.
