I had to do a scan, a known virus, with a number of virus scanners.
I used Jotti’s I used Virscan and I used Virus Total
They each have a mess-load of virus scanners through their site that allows you to scan at one time to see the results of each scanner
Here are the results of the most known free or cheap virus scanners and antivirus programs out there, scanning two pieces of malware that we got at the office I work in.
Sad to say, the two most known, most promoted most noted free virus scanners out there, failed to detect this. Sad to say, we got these from a machine that was supposedly protected by Symantec Endpoint. We received an email that told us to update our tax information, and well it was bundled with an executable. The second one is another virus/trojan that was sent in an email disguised as being from Fedex, they sent an executable file saying it would help us track our recently shipped package.. The computer that received this email, the user actually ran th program and it installed and mass emailed her address book with the same message, then it downloaded tons of stuff into the machine, eventually shuts off internet access until an expected time then it opens internet back up quickly to download more updates, then it shuts it down.
So if you have a virus scanner that is cheap or free and want to see how it did in our little test, check the two pdf files I link and see for yourself.
If you do not have adobe pdf reader, I advise you use foxit, it’s ten times faster and much more useful.