Best anti virus for 64-Bit Windows 7 OS

I wonder how much a particular internet provider influences exposure to viruses.
I visit many different and varied sites and up until recently only ran AVG free and malewarebytes, never got any viruses or alerts about intrusions.

Well Mychael, maybe you are avoiding risky places, maybe it is set to work silently w/o notifications, or maybe your software just isn't catching the bad stuff.

A real problem are the predators who realize people are worried about viruses and they actually write malware (which is really just a virus itself) just to sell you worthless virus software. Basically they kidnap your computer and hold it for ransom until you pay up. "You have a virus! You have a virus! Pay us to remove it!" ... yeah right You wrote the virus I'm infected with, low life scum.

The truth is, if the software isn't bloatware - hogging your system resources, or destructive - deleting good files, or malicious - see malware mentioned above, then until you do get a virus, whatever virus software you are using WAS good software for YOU.

With as many new exploits as are created every single day it is impossible for any one provider to block everything, thus the reason for heuristic protection which is basically, hmm this is suspicious, I'll delete it just in case.

Sooner or later, with enough web access, you will get hit - that is why you should make routine back-ups, system checkpoints, and restore discs.

Fingers crossed then as considering I've been online since win95 I've never had an issue. True though you never know how good an AV is till it has to do it's stuff in anger.

Well said, TrainableMan! With the options available today, there's NO excuse for not backing up. Macrium Reflect is one of the best free backup solutions on the market, it works with XP & up. I have used and recovered with this one. The one that ships with 7, not as good as Macrium, but the best that Windows has produced, and I've recovered with it, too. Whenever I add or remove a program, or a round of updating has taken place, I backup. With Macrium, a 50GB backup takes less than 10 minutes.

And as far as to what you backup on, if you have a good drive laying around that you pulled to upgrade, enclosures can be found for as little as $15. And even if you had to buy a drive, you can build a 500GB one for $65 to $75, mabye less. It takes less than five minutes to assemble the drive into the case. And if you have to, DVD's will work, too. Any backup is better than none, especially if you don't have a reinstall disc or your retail disc to fall back on.

One other thing, most backup programs have an option, or asks you to burn a recovery disc to access your files with. Make sure you do this, or your backup could be worthless in some cases.

Cat

I have Avast and Security Essentials both running real time scanning, both updating every day and a daily scan from MSE. Never had a virus on 7 so far
I haven't heard much of Comodo before. Would anyone recommend it over avast?

Both Avast and MSE are very good programs, Comodo released back in mid-April a free version of their Internet Security v4.0 software.

I personally haven't run it because I use G DATA Internet Security Suite, but what few reviews I've read give it good marks.

Check out this thread here where I posted some info about Comodo's new free IS suite: Best free Anti-Virus programs

It's becoming obvious (through users & reviews) which AV's are good and which to stay away from. I've noticed one on the market recently, I have it as an online scanner in XP, is BitDefender. They have free and paid versions. Has anyone had positive or negative experiences with them? If so, I'd like to hear about it. I'm looking for a second (non-active) scanner to evaluate with XP. XP is no longer by far my main OS, but it makes for a great testing ground, because if there's a virus around waiting to plant itself on a system, XP is vulnerable to anything. I know this firsthand, and after the last two years of running it exclusively, I was ready for 7.

Cat, I had a paid version of Bitdefender which I'd purchased and registered online.
Initially I thought it was ok till the time it began to give problems, not updating properly, telling me I had a trojan but not removing, file issues. Stuff like that.

Online support was, crap basically, everything was done via email, their customer support links were hard to navigate and I never got timely nor helpfull results.

To highlight how dumb they were even after I deleted the program and told them what I thought in the customer satisfaction survey I still kept getting emails telling me my program was out of date and to renew subscription.

Like a lot of things with software they can evolve or de-evolve with time and depending on if the original company still markets it but based on my experience with Bitdefender I'd advise you give it a miss.

I used BitDefender for two years and had no problems with it at all. It's a very good AV program and firewall.

I used their internet security suite version and never suffered any problems. It was pricey though about $50 for a year subscription.

I recently started using G DATA Internet Security Suite and it is very reasonably priced at $29.95 per year. In addition, it is one of the top two rated AVs out there.

Thrax gives it a "two thumbs up" recommendation, and that's good enough for me, along with the reviews and tests from: www.av-comparatives.org

That chart looks fairly in order, but AVG in front of Avast? Get real! I've removed all kinds of crap that AVG missed from four different computers, three with MSE & Malwarebytes, and the other with Avast and Malwarebytes. AVG is usually "giveaway" software that comes on many refurbished computers sold on eBay, and other resellers. I wouldn't run it on anything after seeing the damage on other's computers. But, there's other's that swears behind it, however, the numbers are dwindling.