I've used AVG Free for years, without problems (well, the odd false positive - but few, and I can live with them).MSE, otoh, I don't like. Just ran it for a week on a new W7 install and had a nightmare installing FSDreamteam airports. Good support from the FSDT people got me sorted, but I can't get on with an AV program that starts buggering around with my installs without mentioning it to me. MSE is now gone, and AVG is back, and I'm a happy camper.Frame rate hit with AVG = zero.

Microsoft Security Essentials (free) and exclude the FSX folder. Done.

I use this too and it works well.Bruce.

Hello,Is it safe to turn my virus checker off while using FSX?

I never run virus software in combination with FSX and using ASE, works fine and saves a lot of background noise of allocation for resources...It makes no sense to leave it on :( Cheers,

My A/V is off and my firewall is on. No problems here either.

Some virus programs can be pretty intrusive but if they are setup to run scheduled scans and on-access scan is disabled while flying it shouldn't be impacting performance too much. Most if not all virus applications allow you to temporarily disable on-access scans and some allow you to do this from the taskbar. Just for the record, a hardware firewall does not prevent machines behind the firewall from getting trojans, a virus, malware or adware. There are some software firewalls that while installed on the localhost can provide a reasonable level of protection. I have a dedicated firewall appliance at home and I run an enterprise level virus solution on all my servers, workstations and laptops.