Where can I find some good antivirus programs and firewalls?

[NightWolve]

I use basic free AVG. In my Windows 10 tablets I just rely on default Windows Defender.

https://www.avg.com/en-us/free-antivirus-download

[majors]

Bump, does anyone have advice here? 
My PC has been acting really slow recently and I wonder if it's a virus or botnet or what.

We know where xele's been going...

It's been a while since I had to bother keeping up with virus/malware shit, but Norton had some freebie tool called Norton Power Eraser that helped out with baddies. Other than the normal barrage of 'Bytes, Spybot and Super (Install, scan-clean, uninstall). From what I experienced, viruses are not the main concern, it's all spy/mal/ransomware nowadays. Oh, and web hijacks...that was what freaked out users the most!

I just assume my crap is compromised and could format my machines(s) any hour.

[SignOfZeta]

Dang. And here I am pirating whatever I want since before this 11 year old thread started and never contracting anything despite not running any protection that isn’t built into the OS. I must be blessed.

[xelement5x]

Yeah it's weird, normally I don't have issues and even this seems like it's only intermittent.  I only notice slowdowns occasionally.

[NightWolve]

I'd also recommend Crap Cleaner to examine your registry Run key, see all the crap that set itself to start every time Windows boots.

Any Google new version checks you should delete, and other stuff that might be outdated, etc. Looking at services.msc (when typed in Run box) and disabling stuff in there if you know what you're doing can help. But yeah, reduce any extra 3rd party crap that wants to start with Windows is what you wanna do. Good luck.

https://www.ccleaner.com

[Dicer]

Avast, one and done...