Best Anti Virus for old PCs

[Chris Thomas 0]

Which is the best Anti Virus software for old PC with low system requirement and offering a decent protection

[hazelnut 2]

What operating system are you using?

[Chris Thomas 0]

This is not for me. This is for my friend who has a very old PC which he won't throw away.

 

He has Windows XP SP3 but I was amazed that it only has 128MB ram

 

He currently uses COMODO internet securities with require only 64 MB

[marmite 0]

He has Windows XP SP3 but I was amazed that it only has 128MB ram

Buy him some RAM for Christmas!

[Andavari 1]

No matter which one he uses with only 128 MB of RAM the startup of his computer I suspect will be considerably slow. He may not notice it as much with him being used to it but I personally couldn't live with it myself.

 

On an old used laptop my mom sold on eBay which also only had 128 MB RAM I installed AntiVir Personal Free Antivirus onto it. AntiVir seemed to do the best resource-wise but it still took that laptop a good 1-2 minutes before it could be used during AntiVir loading the Guard ("resident shield").

 

Definitely tell him to get more RAM for it especially if he plans on using it for another year or two! If that older PC can use at least 1GB of RAM go for it. WinXP needs at least 512 MB of RAM to really run properly and smoothly without things coming to a complete crawl.

[Chris Thomas 0]

Yes, I will buy him a ram.

 

Thanks for your advice

[login123 0]

Sorry to bump it, but I just put Avira on an Acer with 1.5 GHz intel and 512 kb ram, wxp home sp3, and the av runs great. Whole computer runs a lot better than I expected it to.

[Andavari 1]

Sorry to bump it, but I just put Avira on an Acer with 1.5 GHz intel and 512 kb ram, wxp home sp3, and the av runs great. Whole computer runs a lot better than I expected it to.

That isn't really in the realm of being an old 'n' slow computer though (think Win98 hardware specs but with WinXP installed). It's probably running so good mostly because of the ram specs I suppose. But yeah Avira AntiVir runs pretty alarming well once fully started on older systems.

[Keno69 0]

I've used Avast! on a Win98/ME computer without any problem. As already mensioned his memory is the the biggest problem. If he only has 128MB then its a very old computer or the user as never thought about upgarding the basics (memory). Memory is quite cheap today but if its an old computer you need to get the exact spec of the memory in use. Don't think that buying faster memory will make the computer run faster it won't, in fact it may run slower.

 

In fact if he's using 128MB on WinXP I'm supprised he can do anything with it unless he wants to make a coffee while things load and run. 500MB is the minimum needed to run WinXP with ease.

[Eli 0]

It's probably running so good mostly because of the ram specs I suppose.

Hi Andavari

Are you saying in fact that a higher RAM than 1 giga may even slow XP down?

[CTskifreak 0]

Hi Andavari

Are you saying in fact that a higher RAM than 1 giga may even slow XP down?

 

He was replying to someone with 512 MB of RAM, versus the OP's 128 MB's of RAM. I had 512 MB for a while, but put in 2 GB's and realized it made all the difference.

 

AJ

[Andavari 1]

Hi Andavari

Are you saying in fact that a higher RAM than 1 giga may even slow XP down?

No! If a WinXP PC has less than 512 MB RAM I would expect it to run slow. It's also processor related too though and they're interconnected.

[login123 0]

That isn't really in the realm of being an old 'n' slow computer though (think Win98 hardware specs but with WinXP installed). It's probably running so good mostly because of the ram specs I suppose. But yeah Avira AntiVir runs pretty alarming well once fully started on older systems.

 

Hi Andavari. I understood what you meant. Thanks. That computer had been sitting dead for about 3 years, I was very happy to get it up and going for a niece, but was afraid that the increased memory demands of new applications would overwhelm it. It lags a bit, but as pointed out on here, memory is not too expensive nowadays.

[pctech 0]

Avast or

AVG Anti-Virus

 

hope this helps

[Andavari 1]

Avast or

AVG Anti-Virus

Those will work too but probably not as light as AntiVir. They're all going to be running under their recommended specs though on a system with only 128 MB RAM, they really need much more.

[Icedrake 0]

Panda Cloud AV is also as light as Avira. It's also been proven to be one of the best free AV's out there. Got a 99.6% on a PCMag test!

[Andavari 1]

Panda Cloud AV is also as light as Avira. It's also been proven to be one of the best free AV's out there. Got a 99.6% on a PCMag test!

I've tried Panda Cloud Antivirus, two versions of it actually. While PCMag may test it I'd rather see the official results from the likes of ICSA Labs, and/or West Coast Labs, etc.

 

ICSA Labs has nothing about it as seen here, and neither does West Coast Labs as seen here.

[Adept 0]

Try Eset Nod32 v. 2x