What are the best free antivirus programs right now?

I've used Malwarebytes + Windows Defender for years now to protect my PC and remove malware/viruses whenever I get something nasty. But lately Malwarebytes looks like its moving away from that basic, free program that I was so good. Can anyone confirm or deny its loss of quality? Can anyone suggest another quality program to use?

Little off topic but, is CCleaner still popular and good?

Are there any MUST HAVE programs for windows 10 in your opinions?

Hi there. I'm sure you know that you are your best AV by having good habits with surfing, email attachments, and watching downloads.

Defender has advanced quite nicely. That's all I've been using for quite some time with no problems of infections.

I don't use any Registry cleaner and for disk cleaning I use below instead of CCleaner now.

Open Admin Command prompt > Paste the script below > Check all the boxes. (I don’t check any error logging boxes) Do not close the command window until all the taskbar flashing windows have stopped.

%SystemRoot%\System32\Cmd.exe /c Cleanmgr /sageset:65535 & Cleanmgr /sagerun:65535

HippsieGypsie said:

Defender has advanced quite nicely. That's all I've been using for quite some time with no problems of infections....

Me too. It can be made even more effective by turning on PUA (aka PUP) detection.

Enable or Disable Windows Defender PUA Protection in Windows 10

...I don't use any Registry cleaner and for disk cleaning I use below instead of CCleaner now...

I still find CCleaner useful, there are a few things Microsoft's Disk Cleanup can't do. I mainly use CCleaner to delete the temporary internet files for the third-party browsers. It's also good for selectively cleaning cookies across all installed browsers at one hit. IE/Edge don't let you pick and choose which cookies to delete (other browsers do, but the MS ones don't). CCleaner lets you whitelist the the cookies you want to keep (like the TenForums login cookie) then delete all the others for all browsers at once.

Bree said:

Me too. It can be made even more effective by turning on PUA (aka PUP) detection.

Enable or Disable Windows Defender PUA Protection in Windows 10

Thanks for the reminder. Forgot to turn this in a few of my Insider builds.

I still find CCleaner useful, there are a few things Microsoft's Disk Cleanup can't do. I mainly use CCleaner to delete the temporary internet files for the third-party browsers. It's also good for selectively cleaning cookies across all installed browsers at one hit. IE/Edge don't let you pick and choose which cookies to delete (other browsers do, but the MS ones don't). CCleaner lets you whitelist the the cookies you want to keep (like the TenForums login cookie) then delete all the others for all browsers at once.

Great program. No doubt. Started by a few geeks writing code with all the good intentions, but with the latest fiasco it was proof I just can't trust the new owners. Quite frankly I stopped using it when I heard they bought it. Here's a typical example of how a conglomerate can't manage security like a lot of them. And it's an AV company?

Been using Ccleaner for years, probably just as long as I've used Avast Free, and still using Avast Free to this day on every PC, While I don't mind Defender, guess so used to using Avast and speed of the scanning Avast does, that I haven't switched permently yet, don't know if I ever will at this point.

Things I'm concerned about with Defender, does it offer same protection as Avast, Does it detect properly an infection? does it slow down systems at all? Been using Avast since June 2006 version 4.7, to 17.7 right now

AMDMan2016 said:

...Defender ... does it slow down systems at all?

No, not noticeably.

I use Glary Utilities free version, been using it since Vista days, there are those that don't like these system "cleaners" but I never had any problems with it......I once used CCleaner and wiped everything, but that was my own fault......I also now use Windows Defender on both my machines, and find it excellent.......

AMDMan2016 said:

Things I'm concerned about with Defender, does it offer same protection as Avast,

Don't know. All's I can say is that I've been using Defender ever since release back in W7. Never a problem. They also say it works at kernel level.

Does it detect properly an infection?

Caught anything I've ever come across.

does it slow down systems at all?

When I installed it on 7 there was a noticeable difference. Now a days with these powerful machines we have I don't think it's a concern with any of them, although I'll bet Defender uses less resources.