Hi Liam,

Antivirus software is nearly as crucial as a PC’s operating system. Even if you’re well aware of potential threats and practice extreme caution, some threats just can’t be prevented without the extra help of an AV program—or a full antivirus suite.

Here are some of the best anti-virus available for your Window 7.

2. Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2019 offers excellent protection for your home computer from a variety of malware types, including destructive ransomware, Trojans, rootkits and phishing schemes. In our tests of antivirus software, Bitdefender consistently blocked us from visiting malicious websites and stopped viruses from downloading. All threats are securely and completely deleted so no trace of them are left on your computer.

3. Norton Security Premium is an old name in security, but it has an easy-to-use interface, highly-rated protection, and a number of helpful extra features. It’s on the higher end of the price spectrum at $110 per year (your first year is discounted to $55), but you can install it on up to 10 devices.

4. Trend Micro Maximum Security has an easily navigable interface, great protection, and the price is right. Some of its privacy features didn't work reliably in our tests, but the cloud protection scanning is an interesting feature, and Mute Mode is a great take on the usual gaming mode feature. Overall, Maximum Security is a good choice for antivirus on Windows.

5. Avira Free Security Suite displays a large warning in your Chrome or Firefox web browser if you try to visit a site known to have malware on it. If a virus tries to automatically download to your computer, Avira stops it then moves the threat to the quarantine file. This software comes with several security tools, like a system vulnerability scanner, a personal firewall and a VPN. Each tool is a separate module that you must set up individually, and you can’t access other tools without first returning to the beginning of the dashboard. Overall Avira does a decent job blocking malware, both malicious sites and virus downloads. Threats that make it to your computer are caught and quarantined by Avira Free Antivirus. The secure browsing feature marks search results so you can easily see which sites are safe to visit. Because Avira is a free program, it frequently displays pop-up ads. These caused some slowdown to our test computers. However, if you’re a gamer, Avira automatically enables its gaming mode that keeps the pop-ups at bay so you have more of your system’s resources and less interruption while you play.