VirusFighter is a compact antivirus (only 5.9 megabyte download) that is designed to efficiently scan a system while using the smallest resources. While the software is compact, it is by no means less potent than its competitors. The antivirus also integrates seamlessly into the latest versions of Windows including all 64 bit versions (A claim I cannot make about free antivirus form AVG) and even includes a form of real time protection.
The installation of VirusFighter was seamless. The program has the capability to detect if any other free antivirus are currently installed. In my case it found Innobate antivirus (it didn’t properly uninstall from the Windows Action / Security Center) and prompted that I may not want to proceed. Next, VirusFighter reports its status (the program is actively protecting the system) to the Windows Action Center unlike many free competitors.
After the installation completed, Virus Fighter wanted to update the virus definitions. While the process took about 5 minutes on a high speed connection, it still finished in a reasonable amount of time.
The virus scanning process isn’t the fastest but it uses very little resources. The “quick scan†isn’t really quick at all and required about 10 minutes to finish. The virus scan didn’t detect any viruses on the test computer. However, what made VirusFIghter stand out was its resource usage. During the scan, VirusFighter used only 2% cpu power and about 10 megabytes of RAM. Also, VirusFIghter doesn’t increase or decrease it footprint from 10 megabytes unlike other free antivirus; it simply stays at a constant amount regardless of function. In addition to the quick scan option, there is the full scan and the custom scan. I didn’t notice any impact on daily computing tasks with the program active.
VirusFighter 6.6 also offers many more features even given its small size. One can easily schedule scans and specify if they want a quick or full scan to be performed. VirusFighter has a set list of file extensions to be scanned by the real time shield. A user can modify this list which includes files such as vbs, xlxs, docx, scr, swf, etc. by adding or deleting extensions or a user can simply have virusfighter scan all file extensions. Finally, VirusFighter includes a quarantine area and even a white list if a virus is in fact a false positive.
