Some Anti Virus Programs for Windows XP
Currently there are not a lot of free or low cost anti virus programs that work good with Windows XP. A lot of programs have dropped support for Windows XP since it is no longer supported by Microsoft. There are still a few fairly good basic free programs that work with Windows XP.
Avast free Anti virus is a very good all around anti virus program with a nice interface and is easy to use with a fairly small drain on computer resources. It has some nice features including a system security check program that does a pretty good job detecting and pointing out potential security issues and possible fixes. It is about the best option for the majority of XP users. It can be downloaded for free in either a online installer or a full offline version.
AVAST
AVG is a good basic program that does the basics and is stable and fast. The look and feel, seem a bit dated and it is somewhat light on features. Both online install and full version can be downloaded from there website.
AVG
Kaspersky Free is a about the best at detecting and dealing with a large range of viruses and malware. They have a very good website support and offer an assortment of related free security tools. One minor issue is the lengthy online install and they don’t offer a offline download for installing the free version.
Kaspersky Free
Currently there are not a lot of free or low cost anti virus programs that work good with Windows XP. A lot of programs have dropped support for Windows XP since it is no longer supported by Microsoft. There are still a few fairly good basic free programs that work with Windows XP.
Avast free Anti virus is a very good all around anti virus program with a nice interface and is easy to use with a fairly small drain on computer resources. It has some nice features including a system security check program that does a pretty good job detecting and pointing out potential security issues and possible fixes. It is about the best option for the majority of XP users. It can be downloaded for free in either a online installer or a full offline version.
AVAST
AVG is a good basic program that does the basics and is stable and fast. The look and feel, seem a bit dated and it is somewhat light on features. Both online install and full version can be downloaded from there website.
AVG
Kaspersky Free is a about the best at detecting and dealing with a large range of viruses and malware. They have a very good website support and offer an assortment of related free security tools. One minor issue is the lengthy online install and they don’t offer a offline download for installing the free version.
Kaspersky Free
360 Total Security is another very good basic anti virus option that runs on windows. It comes in two free version essentials which is nice small program just the basics takes up about the least resources of the programs on the market about 50mb of memory so it is a good option to consider if you have a computer with limited resources or internet connection. The other free version is a more complete suite with a driver updater, firewall and a few other features. These programs can be downloaded from there website as offline full install programs and both are fairly small downloads and quick easy installs.
360 Total Security
360 Total Security
Some Anti Virus Removal tools that work good for Windows XP
These are some stand alone anti virus removal tools that can be used to help remove viruses or malware from a computer that has been infected. Note it is advised that you close any other anti virus or cleaner programs running on you computer before running virus removal software.
RKILL is a program by bleepingcomputer.com that stops likely viruses that are running on your computer and gives you a list so the issues can be dealt with manually or with a removal program. Note that it does not remove or alter anything it just stops questionable programs from running.
Rkill
Malwarebytes is about the best of the basic virus removal programs and can be downloaded and run fairly easily and safely in a Windows environment. It can be installed or run from a USB so it can be downloaded from a different computer if needed. It takes a couple of hours to run in some of cases but deals fairly well with 95 % or so of the viruses and malware out there.
Malwarbytes
JRT is a simple virus and junk removal tool mainly targeting adware. It runs as a isolated text program at the coding level so it often times finds stuff that other tools don’t and doesn’t take long to download and run about 30min total. This one won’t find everything but is worth a try and seems to do a good job with junk or adware programs that many programs miss.
JRT
Kaspersky Rescue Disk is the big hammer of the free virus tools it is a fairly big program over 300mb that runs on it’s own Linux based Operating System from a USB. This gives it the advantage of being able to possibly fix issues in cases where other software has failed or Windows won’t boot. It is noted to be about the most though of the virus tools but can take a bit of computer know how and several hours to run so it is one to only be used if other methods fail. You can download the programs and find fairly good instructions for making a rescue USB drive from there website.
Kaspersky Rescue Disk
Sophos Virus Removal Tool downloaded and seemed to work fine and should find most viruses. However it takes a long time to run in some cases 3hrs and in our checking didn’t find anything the other programs missed.
Sophos Virus Removal Tool
VIPRERescue is another basic virus removal tool that seems to do the job. It is a bit different in that it is designed to run in Safe mode as administrator. It does take some time to run in many cases up to a couple of hours. On checking it did find some minor issues missed by other programs.
VIPRERescue