Can anyone recommend a light, small, well-behaved antivirus that can be exited completely, with configurable scan parameters, and that doesn't think it's a firewall or web filter or whatnot? (The last AV software that I found bearable was McAfee v4.)

My usage is almost only scan on demand, usually thru context menu (but with how slow that usually goes and the unpleasantness of AV software in general I've mostly switched to calculating a hash for the random file I suspect and pasting that into virustotal.com). Very rarely, in recent years almost never, I also run a background scanner when I want to try a new software or, say, every few years when I suspect an active infection.

I've recently had to use an AV and tried AVG9 Free. I've seen worse but I really don't appreciate the fact it installs hooks to places I told it not to (IE, network, maybe others), that it runs multiple processes all the time even when its service (the non-hidden one) and background scanner are off, that it puts data files under the Windows directory, and that it has no real "exit" option.

Edited August 9, 201016 yr by shae

The free version of avast! is worth a look. I tried AVG and hated it. Avast! can be exited, run in silent gaming mode and has a small footprint with low system resources. It only thinks it is a firewall etc if you upgrade to the pro version.

Hope this helps.

You can run AVG on demand:

"C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG9\avgscanx.exe" /COMP /HEUR /ARC /CLEAN /BOOT /PROC /REG /PUP /COO /ADS /PRIORITY=High

About AVG bloat, unneeded services, etc., you can disable most of it with Sysinternals' autoruns.exe