My old computer is too slow for anti-virus software. What should I do?

Read the article that everyone's commenting on.
Subscribe to the RSS Feed for comments on this article.

Install more memory. It will improve the overall performance; especially for the pictures and music files. It is not very expensive.

I added more memory to my 9 year old PC and it certainly helps. But beware that SIMM's for older machines are different and not compatible with new ones. I recommend to triple check - I only double checked. :(

P4 and only 128MB? My old computer has an AMD K6@368MHz and still has 128MB. It should at least be possible to upgrade it, except whilst scanning and loading most AV's do not have a big memory footprint, especially the free ones.

I haven't tried it yet but the first thing that came to my mind was Panda Cloud Antivirus.

http://www.cloudantivirus.com/

1GB total RAM should be perfect for XP (512MB should be your minimum) .

Another thing, since a "free" antivirus program was installed I assume it is AVG. AVG's default setting is to scan the computer on every start which can drastically slow computer response for a long time (30 minutes or more). The scan can be disabled in the the settings and can still be initiated manually at any time.

I'am in the same situation running an old (not that old) machine. I have an HP Pavillion P4 and I have added 1.5Gb of memory and still runs slow. I have been using this computer for around 5 years, where I have been installing and removing programs all along that time, I have never reformated the HD, I refuse because I have a few applications that I don't remember where I got them. The issue here is, I purchased a 40dlls software by UNIBLUE to speed up my computer and not improvement at all in my case (SpeedupmyPC and RegistriBooster at http://www.uniblue.com )What I have done is a have a free antivirus AVG, that can be downloaded from http://free.avg.com/ and setup the scanning time for a day and time you do not plan to have heavy work on your computer, because as JH said, while scanning your machine will be slower than a sleeping turttle. My suggestion would be, intall XP in case you are not running it, as Leo said, add more memory as possible and install AVG antivirus. That's what I have in my daughter's old laptop (10 years CompUsa laptop) with 384Mb RAM, Celeron 333Mhz, and runs acceptable for pictures, MP3 files, Web browsing and email reading. No heavy applications such as simulation or fast action video games, but it is still running.

I often build (rebuild) older machines to sell cheap and by far the easiest way to upgrade them is installing more RAM memory. I have customers who still prefer Windows 98, believe it or not. For anti-virus, AVG 7.5 version is still updated and will work fine (and it's free). Filehippo.com still has the 7.5 version to download, you just have to look through the list of old versions and pick the 'newest' 7,5 version. It won't slow down your computer either. Hope this helps.

The questioner stated that "I do not use it for the internet " so it appears that he needs a light weight anti-virus program,, like Clamwin which is an on demand scanner, http://www.clamwin.com/ and should have little impact on performance except when actually scanning. If the OS is Win2000 or later (I doubt it also, Leo), He should consider getting Sandboxie, and running all his programs sandboxed, only recover files he is sure are safe to the hard disk, and clean the sandbox after each useIf some malware does get in the sandbox it will not affect the OS. For Spyware detection/removal he can use Spybot or Ad-Aware which still work with older systems, but run them on demand as well to keep the computer's performance up to par.

Great advice, all of you, especially Leo. I have Linux running on several old PCs. The problem now is, I hate getting rid of a machine when its running so well. When I say old, I mean Armada/PIII old. By the way, more memory is a great way to handle the performance problem. That's what I've done on a P4. I also run Avast anti-virus on that machine, which seems to be less intrusive than other AV programs that run in the background. Clamwin is great if you have users (i.e., family) who remember to run the scans, but they don't, so I found Avast to be the fastest one that runs in the background.

I have XP with 512mb memory runs fast enough for
me should more memory be installed ?

To post a comment on "My old computer is too slow for anti-virus software. What should I do?", please return to that article's main page.