Downloaded and installed a new free Anti Virus Program called Active Virus Shield by AOL. Since AOL is a very reputable company, I gather programs by them should be more than okay. They are offering this service free to everyone without having to register AOL. All you need is to supply them with your email so the activation code can be sent to you.
Downloading was not too tedious and the installation was a breeze though I have to remove my existing Anti Virus program because it was incompatible with this new program. The old one has expired anyway and it was time I got a new one or pay about $90 to keep the old one. I opted for the new.
There will be a couple of restarts, but immediately after installation, you will be prompted for the activation code which should be in your inbox of the email address that you gave during download. Once activated, Active Virus Shield will advise that you do a total system scan. I was quite reluctant at first because I had other things to do, but went ahead and let it do the scanning in the background while continue with what I was doing. Surprisingly, the scan did not effect the performance of my 4 year old PC and I was able to go about my my job without any slack in performance.
The program took more than an hour to go through about 300000 files I had in my computer. From what I thought was a clean computer that I was having, Active Virus Shield detected 6 trojans, 3 of which are stubborn ones that cannot be neutralised and had to be deleted manually. You will be prompted first if such a virus is detected.
This Virus shield offers all the protection that you find in other paid versions and there are no frills and whistles. Should be a good alternative if you don’t want to pay for Virus protection. As I have just started using it today, I still have no idea how it will fare in the long term, but so far it looks good.
