Bitdefender security products have stayed on the top of antivirus test result charts for past few years. So far most of the their products were paid only commercial software. But now they have released a lightweight, free-of-cost antivirus solution for Windows called Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition. So even if you do not currently have the budget to buy a full fledged Bitdefender antivirus product, you can still enjoy the protection from the same antivirus engine and virus definitions using the Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition.
You can download Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition from the Bitdefender website. The download is a boot-strapper which automatically downloads the 32-bit or 64-bit installer of the Bitdefender Antivirus for your system, using which the actual installation is performed. The installation of the Bitdefender Antivirus is very easy thing to do and you are not presented with any complex settings or steps. During the setup, it further downloads more files from the Internet and installs them on your system.
After the successful installation, you would be presented with a window where you have to login using your Bitdefender account. If you do not have a Bitdefender account, then you can create a new account for free by supplying your name and e-mail address. Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition would place an icon in the notification area on your Windows taskbar. You can double-click on this icon to view the protection status of your system.
Being a very lightweight antivirus product, it uses very little system resources and you will not notice the presence of this antivirus in your system. The only time you would notice Bitdefender Antivirus is when it jumps into action and blocks a malware in your file system or when you happen to visit a malicious or phishing website.
If Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition finds a virus or malicious file that cannot be repaired, then it renames the file by appending .gzquar to the filename and makes the virus ineffective by denying access to file by any of the programs in Windows. You can check the quarantined files by clicking on the Bitdefender notification area icon and opening up the Quarantines section. You can choose to restore or delete the files under the Action column for each file.
Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition not only blocks you from viruses, trojans and malware on your hard disk or USB flash disks, but also from the phishing, malicious and attack websites. It keeps scanning your HTTP data stream which means that all the webpages opened in any of your web browser are continuously monitored. As soon as you visit such a malicious webpage, Bitdefender Antivirus jumps into action and blocks access to the infected webpage, showing you a warning in the browser instead.
In addition to the resident protection, Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition also offers an on-demand scanner using which you can scan your entire system or just selected few files/folders present on your hard disk. To scan a file, folder or a drive, just right-click on it and select Scan with Bitdefender. You would not see any extra window because the scanning is performed in the background and infected files are automatically quarantined. The most you would see is a notification message in the system tray.
If you want a free, but at the same time, a powerful, silent and robust antivirus solution for Windows machines, then you should download and use Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition without thinking twice. It keeps you protected from malware, rootkits and actively provides you with IDS (intruder detection system) and HTTP scanning protection. It does not have any bloated user interface and above all you do not have to configure anything – this antivirus solution is a complete configuration free protection for your PC.
You can download Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition from http://www.Bitdefender.com/solutions/free.html.