I thought I'd post this here due to the volume of traffic.
 
My non-DAW pc has been a bit sluggish recently, so I scanned it on Saturday with MSE and it came up with nothing, no threats of any kind.
 
Tonight I've just run Malawarbytes and it detected 111 threats.
 
I've removed them and my machine is running like a dream.
 
So be warned - MSE isn't picking up common adware threats and possibly other nasties.

No virus scanner is perfect, but whatever you do don't use two of them (they will conflict with each other).
ZoneAlarm extreme works for me (not free). AVG is OK as well. Still like security essentials I wouldn't taint it as other virus scanners have massive faults as well.
 
IMHO if you don't pay you get what you are given, however I've yet to see a virus scanner that does a perfect job paid or unpaid. Trend Micro perhaps...

I concur that none get all, and that running multiple ones can cause lots of trauma.
 
I happen to run the free one from Avast.  It does a good job, has a small footprint, and allows temporary suspension, if one needs to stop it for a bit while doing something like a Sonar download or a Sonar installation.
 
Bob Bone
 

 
And what about "Microsoft Safety Scanner" (that you have to download, and expires after 10 days) ?

Thanks for that. never heard of it.
That clearly is a scanner to use if you think you already have a problem, not a long term preventative solution.

If you don't do a 'Detailed' scan with MSE it can miss items. For me the difference in time is substantial, say 15 minutes for the 'quick' scan and 12 hours for the 'detailed' one. If any problems are detected I will then run MalwareBytes and it may pick up a couple of items.
 
My attitude is an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of care so I am obsessive about where I go and once I am someplace what I click on. Any site I might end up on that is at all dodgy is a shutdown and full scan...immediately
 
Regards,

I tend to run MSE to keep out the riff-raff and run malwarebytes about once a month to grab anything MSE may have missed.  What I have found to be more useful than either is two browser add-ons that do a great job of preventing most of these things from grabbing a foothold to begin with:
 
https://www.mywot.com/  This add-on warns of unsafe sites.  Occasionally it gives a false positive, but it does an overall job of at least making you think about clicking on that weird tinyurl that ends up being a nasty link
 
http://noscript.net/  takes the approach of blocking just about every script and leaving it up to you to allow it.  It has some pre-installed whitelist sites, but it does make being surprised by script based sites that install junk in the background a lot harder to even get started, let alone take root.  The only downside I have seen is that it occasionally works too well and I have to figure out how to play a video i actually want to see.  This typically only occurs on sites that have a ridiculous amount of third party scripts embedded on the page.  When i realize that I have to allow 20 different scripts to run just to watch one video, that is usually a sign that maybe I don't need to see that video.
 
 

 
Yes, but i use it from time to time, as a supplement to MSE (whom I should maybe change for Avast for better results - ?!), as it seems for complete and up to date.
[about Microsoft Safety Scanner]

Microsoft Security Essentials (or Windows Defender in Windows 8, they keep changing the name) has one of the lowest detection rates you'll find, about 90%, because they don't want to have false positives. They do well in that regard, they are pretty much 0 false positive all the time, but it is a tradeoff in detection. Good for regular users though since many non-technical people get pissed at false positives.
 
If you are willing to spend money, I recommend ESET NOD32. It's detection rate is good, and it is quite fast. You can also set it to exclude extensions like WAV, NKI, NKM, etc to it doesn't mess with audio software.
 
For the highest detection rates, look at Kaspersky. Still not 100%, but tends to be the highest out there. Trend Micro also tends to be good but is really slow.

> Kaspersky
 
My totally biased opinion is to avoid this, had several bad experiences :)
 
Review of antivirus products here:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372364,00.asp