Some of the best malware protection software is free. Malware is short for malicious software. This includes any
software that has been designed for malicious purposes, such as, viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, data mining, key loggers, etc. There are several software companies that provide excellent free malware protection software that out performs most of the popular commercial programs. Many of the commercial programs slow down your computer by robbing system resources and performing too many unnecessary background scans. Many of the better free programs are better optimized for high performance and provide better protection.
The top 3 programs are Avira, Avast, and AVG. I have been running AVG for many years without any problems. AVG will out perform the most popular commercial software and provide better protection. However, after doing some research I have found that Avira and Avast have been receiving better reviews and I have recently switched to Avira. After installing Avira it discovered something that AVG missed. Avast is also a very highly recommended product with many great features. They all perform automatic daily updates to protect you from the latest malware and have free basic versions that do an excellent job protection your computer. I still only use protection software to alert me of an infection. Once infected I do a complete restore of my operating system. I have found that once you are infected a virus or malware will download other programs, such as, key loggers, downloaders, other malicious software that might not get detected. So after you go through the cleaning process you find that you are once again infected.
So to prevent reinfection and losing personal information I always restore my operating system using some imaging software, such as, Norton Ghost or Partimage. Partimage is a free Open Source clone program of Norton Ghost. It runs very quickly and is easy to use. Another very good imaging program is the new Clonezilla which also operates very quickly. I maintain my images with the latest security updates so it only takes less than 10 minutes to be up and running again with a fresh operating system. I do this daily in my computer lab which has over 35 computers. Imaging will correct any number of computer issues from infections, registry corruptions, fragmentations, or other software related problems. I always store data and important files in a separate partition so when I restore I only have to restore the operating system partition.
So if you haven’t yet checked out Avira, Avast, or AVG you might not have the best protection software installed on your computer. Some of the best software I have found is free and the best free malware protection software is Avira.
The Computer Repair Training Plus website has addition information that you might find helpful.

