ClamWin is an excellent free anti-virus scanner for Windows. It’s a small and unobtrusive piece of software, which doesn’t hog a lot of system resources or slow your PC down like many overly complex commercial anti-virus tools do. ClamWin quickly and quietly downloads free virus-database updates every day, and can be scheduled to run system scans whenever you choose.
The package integrates with Windows Explorer so that you can easily scan suspect files from the right-click menu, and there’s a Microsoft Outlook add-in tool to automatically remove infected email attachments. We’ve been using ClamWin AV for over year and can vouch for its simplicity and effectiveness, it’s a much more elegant security solution than the bloated, slow commercial AV software we’ve used in the past.
One important point to note is that ClamWin does not provide an on-access virus scanning feature - this means it down not automatically scan files for viruses every time you access them. In our opinion, this is no bad thing, since this kind of feature contributes to system-sluggishness. We think it’s perfectly adequate to run a once-daily system scan to keep your PC safe - so long as you’re protecting yourself with a good firewall and spyware remover tool. However, the developers are currently working on an on-access scanning feature, so hopefully this feature will be available in the near future for those who are extra-cautious.
You can download ClamWin from the project website: http://www.clamwin.com/content/view/18/46/