Low cpu usage anti virus?

[Tygron]

So I've been working on a neighbors computer. It's an old piece of trash running Windows xp and I tried using Avast on it to find it pined the cpu to 100% almost immediately. So I need to find a free low usage anti virus. I've always used Avast on everything and never had this problem before.

[Darkman]

No idea what to use... I know AVG and MalwareBytes make my CPU usage on my rig go up a little bit... The CPU is probably just that weak and it might just have to suffer through the scan...

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ESET online scanner or manually remove the infections.

[TetraSky]

Norton Internet Security. No seriously, it doesn't use much resources, my CPU usage is sitting at 1% right now, because of firefox. Norton isn't taking any CPU usage and the RAM usage for it is sitting at 12MB~ of RAM.

Not sure about XP, but considering the last time I was on XP, I was using the old, unoptimized, pre-2009 version of norton, which was resources heavy on an Athlon XP 2800+, 1GB RAM machine, I'd say the newest version should run even better as it barely use anything since they re-wrote the entire software from scratch in 2009.

Or... if you're just looking for freeware, just install microsoft security essential for xp. It's free. No longer available on the Microsoft website though, but you can find a download for it somewhere on google easily.

[Tygron]

Norton Internet Security. No seriously, it doesn't use much resources, my CPU usage is sitting at 1% right now, because of firefox. Norton isn't taking any CPU usage and the RAM usage for it is sitting at 12MB~ of RAM.

Not sure about XP, but considering the last time I was on XP, I was using the old, unoptimized, pre-2009 version of norton, which was resources heavy on an Athlon XP 2800+, 1GB RAM machine, I'd say the newest version should run even better as it barely use anything since they re-wrote the entire software from scratch in 2009.

Or... just install microsoft security essential for xp. It's free. No longer available on the Microsoft website though, but you can find a download for it somewhere on google easily

Is Norton free now or... Cause I'm not paying for it and I know she won't keep it up and running.

As far as the scan goes I stopped everything on it to try and get it to stop using so much cpu, but nothing worked.

I'll take a look at security essentials though.

[Whorax]

Is just running Linux an option? If they're the type of people/person that can't seem to keep their computer infection free Linux should do them well.

 

That, or you can just politely ask them to use their brains for an antivirus...

[TetraSky]

Is Norton free now or...

It can be.

 

But honestly, like Whorax said, does she do anything that absolutely require her to have Windows? Because Linux is probably the best. For people who just use the computer to browse the internet, watch videos or for typing, Linux is perfect and will provide a much needed performance boost to an old machine. Linux Mint is a good start for inexperienced people, as it has a "similar" interface to windows. (unlike the other big linux distributions, like ubuntu)

[slavano]

This will compare all your beset options

http://www.av-comparatives.org/summary-reports/

[Tygron]

It can be.

But honestly, like Whorax said, does she do anything that absolutely require her to have Windows? Because Linux is probably the best. For people who just use the computer to browse the internet, watch videos or for typing, Linux is perfect and will provide a much needed performance boost to an old machine. Linux Mint is a good start for inexperienced people, as it has a "similar" interface to windows. (unlike the other big linux distributions, like ubuntu)

I thought about that but originally in her PC I installed xp getting rid of her Vista install because I reformatted to start over and the computer had been upgraded to Vista. I couldn't get network drivers to work in the slightest, couldn't even find the manufacturers page for them. Someone gave us a perfectly good xp PC we're giving her. I really don't wanna try to teach her how to use Linux as I barely know what I'm doing outside of basic tasks in Linux. Otherwise I'd have put Linux on her old machine and just given that back.