VTE Virus Scanner is a free and useful antivirus utility.
The fastest virus scanner on the market has just gotten a whole lot faster. With a complete engine rewrite, the scan times are now halved, making even quicker scans possible.
The base component of VTE implements a Wide Area Distribution CRC32 Database and a BHO database that currently hosts 344611 unique signatures.
While using the CRC32 method is by no means the most accurate way to Detect malware, you will find that most malware (worms, virus, trojans, etc) are still detected when you scan for them.
In addition to having user defined heuristics scanning (UDHS), and plug-in support (you still have to edit the paths manually using tweak.exe), the disinfection rates included with the plugins, along with their database implementations dramatically InCrease the chances of catching malware. When scanning with the heuristics, you will find that occasionally a false positive is triggered.
While false positives can be a small nuisance, it is much better than having a false Negative, running said program, and suddenly having an unstable system with no idea what caused the problem.
The base component of VTE does not include disinfection. The reason for this is one of convenience: I simply don't have the time and/or resources to write 300000+ disinfection routines from scratch. To support disinfection techniques, it is recommended that you use an additional scanner with VTE's Plugin Support methods. VTE's base engine, which implements handle manipulation as opposed to thread manipulation is extremely processor intensive when, but ends up being a lot faster.
