Multiple AV Programs are not recommended

Why You Shouldn’t Run Multiple Antivirus Programs At Once

(Source: HowToGeek.com )

Most antivirus programs are designed to be the single security solution for your computer. The antivirus has a background, "always-on" scanning feature that’s enabled by default. When you download a file, load a program, or access a website, the antivirus keeps an eye on everything and ensures it doesn’t match a known threat.

This works fine as long as you only have a single antivirus running at a time. These programs hook deep into your Windows operating system and are not designed to work together. In a best case scenario, running multiple antivirus programs at once could result in degraded performance. In a worst case scenario, the programs could interfere with each other and cause system crashes.

How You Can Scan Your Computer With Multiple Antivirus Programs

However, no antivirus program is perfect. Some antivirus programs may miss problems other antivirus programs will detect. To get more complete detection coverage, you may want to scan your computer with additional antivirus programs while leaving a single antivirus program – such as Microsoft Security Essentials (known as Windows Defender in Windows 8) — running in the background.

The additional antivirus programs you’ll use won’t stay running in the background. They’ll scan your computer once and give you a second opinion. You can load up the additional programs and scan your computer once a week with them. While running the manual scanner, you should consider disabling real-time protection in your primary antivirus program – if only to speed things up.

When you select an additional antivirus program, look for one that doesn’t stay running in the background – this feature is referred to by many names, such as real-time protection, on-access scanning, background protection, or resident shield.

There are several options for second-opinion scanning, including:

Malwarebytes: The free version must be started for a manual scan and can’t run in the background, which is perfect for this use case.


ESET Online Scanner: A quick, one-time scanner from the creators of NOD32. Unlike many online-scanning products from antivirus companies, ESET Online Scanner includes the ability to remove malware it finds.