hello,everyone, anyone ever seem this before?

Personally I haven't use any virus protection is about 10 years or longer. To me it's a complete joke. First of all it's not viruses that cause problems now a days, it's spyware/adware. 2nd, if someone wants to avoid them you just watch what you decide to click on (like obviously don't click on banners). The only viruses I've gotten I have given to myself to help figure out how to help a family memeber or friend get rid of theirs, and every time they got one was because they were clicking on what they shouldn't have, or in one case tried to download a codec from a bogus site.To each their own, but I will never give any of my systems resources to any virus scanner or app for that matter. If anyone thinks they have a great virus scanner then shoot me an email. I will spend no more than 2 minutes writing a virus I am 100% certain will stroll right by your software. They're a joke that have done nothing but cause me problems personally and am amazed so many FS users even use them.*For the record I never install virus protection on customs I build and rather give the user a 5 minute class on how to not be stupid on making choices on the internet. Yes, I get an occasional but rare call when some horny idiot clicked on what they thought was an actual girl wanting to talk to them and got spyware of some sort, but in every case has always been because of porn related sites and gullible new users.If I had to use anything, I would do as Ryan stated since MS have done well by me in the past and theirs have always been the least resource heavy. I'm just glad I made the decision I did, when I did. It has added years to my life hahaha.

Semantics aside, I disagree with this completely. Malware/adware/spyware may be the worst problem out there to some, but trojans and other types are very common as well. I have been alerted more than my fair share of times by different anti-virus programs by just visiting random sites that should be innocuous. Wallpaper sites, driver sites, image hosts, and even an FS forum have all given alerts to trojans and other destructive scripts. I've been on the net since 1994 and know what I'm doing. For the record, warez sites may be the worst, as are some porn sites, but that isn't always the case. I have Kaspersky installed right now at home and was hit the other day looking up some info on a forum. The forum was supposed to be for Windows 7 tech info based on a Google search, but while I was looking at a solution to a wireless problem that seems to have carried over from Vista, I was hit hard. I ended up with a rookit, one or more trojans, registry keys, IP redirects, and a few things in the start up list. In all my years, that was the only time I was hit hard enough that I needed to really go to great lengths to reverse the infection. Now, why is this important? Well Kaspersky told me I was infected as the hits were coming. It wasnt able to block all of it, but no anti-virus software is perfect. I've never been let down by Kaspersky before. Now, without any anti-virus software I would've only known something was amiss by the problems these infections cause. In many cases you don't know you have an infection. I often find those people who say they don't run protection are infected and just don't know it. You may think you're clean because things appear okay, but you could have a host of problems and not know. Now, I realize you could potentially avoid surfing random web sites and only visit places that are secure. This will most likely keep you in the clear, but why restrict where you can go? As far as anti-virus apps being easy to bypass, yes, they aren't perfect. No one program will protect you 100%. Often times, you can get infections that weren't in the wild and no one knew about them to protect you. However, as soon as they are discovered, the good companies add them to the database. Plus good scanners have heuristic methods to counter these threats. Anyhow, not all anti-virus apps are bloated or resource hungry. I've used Kaspersky for a few years and only recently has it become apparent that they might be getting bloated. Prior to that Trend Micro was great, then it became bloated. Norton used to be awesome as well back in the old days, but it turned to junk. Almost all good pay programs become bloated sooner or later. Don't know why. If you are wanting to play FS, then just restart the computer without the AV running. That's what I do. I'm not surfing the net while simming. You get better performance if you close services and a bunch of stuff on restart anyhow.To recommend AV software, right now MSSE (Microsoft Security Essentials) is getting good reviews and I have it on the Windows 7 laptop. I haven't noticed a performace hit at all. Unfortunately, despite what some might say, MSSE only really works for viruses and a few other minor problems. It really doesn't do anything for malware type of problems. So your best free option right now is MSSE combined with Malwarebytes. Malwarebytes is a great program and the free version is fine.