What is a good virus scanner for an 8 year old computar?

[Riesstiu IV]

So, I had to spend a good four hours at my parent's place trying to figure what was causing my dad's computer to take 30 minutes to load XP. It turns out some bloated free anti-virus software from CA Technologies was the culprit which had been slowing his computer down for months with a ****ton of updates while running a lot of unnecessary security protocols in the background.

So what would be a simple good virus scanner for an old computer he only uses to check e-mail and do household finances?

[SlowwHand]

I use AVG Free.

[Riesstiu IV]

What's AVG's background footprint like? Is it just a simple virus scanner or some resource hog? Keep in mind my dad's computer has a Pentium 4 and maybe around 512 MB of RAM.

[SlowwHand]

According to Task Manager, it's using 2,544k. Extremely small.

[calmac87]

I use Cyberdefender. You can download it for free from their website. It's really easy to use and the full version has round the clock tech support.

[BlackCat]

30 minutes sounds pretty insane - are the disc "hot" in this period ? If so, have you tried defragmentation ? If it has just been running for all those years, it might be messed up a bit.

I'm using CA pro (comapany pays) and it is pretty effective.

[Berzerker]

I'd avoid avast

malwarebytes is nice but I dont know if it stops stuff from getting in, but it seems good at getting rid of stuff that does get in

[Nostromo]

What's wrong with Avast? It does the job and its less resource intensive than AVG.

[Berzerker]

it slows my old computer (with xp) down, and start up takes a while.

[Al B. Sure!]

Every day when I turn on my computer, Avast says it updates... is there really an update every day?

[SlowwHand]

It may be just checking for updates, but I wouldn't be shocked if it was downloading updates. I'm with Berz though. From my pirate chat room days, I knew a few people that had problems with it and spyware, from the program itself.

[Wiglaf]

Thread starter is a complete idiot and so are the paranoid douchebags that make up this site. You don't need a virus scanner for just checking email and doing household finances, unless by "checking email" you mean "checking porn" and by "doing household finances" you mean "masturbating." Why are this site's buttons still orange? What the ****

[SlowwHand]

Wrong again, Einstein. Hackers can put baddies in ever image files now. Have you not heard of email viruses? And besides all that, who, besides maybe you, just reads email and does accounting on a PC?

[Wiglaf]

THE SLOW GRATING SOUND OF THE WHEELS TURNING IN YOUR BRAIN AS YOU TRY TO FORMULATE BASIC THOUGHTS OR COMPREHEND SIMPLE ENGLISH SENTENCES CAN BE HEARD FROM WASHINGTON ****ING DC.

So what would be a simple good virus scanner for an old computer he only uses to check e-mail and do household finances?

We might conclude from that statement, without engaging in a huge and unreasonable leap in logic , that this guy's elderly father only uses his computer to check e-mail and do household finances. It's also not possible to download an "email virus" if you're using a HALF DECENT EMAIL CLIENT AND AREN'T TRAFFICKING IN CHILD PORN. THANKS .

[Al B. Sure!]

this thread says 'computar'