Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Pjoseph

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 9, 2009
69
5
I will be running windows on my macbook and wanted to know if I will now need to install a anti virus program to protect it when running in windows mode?

Also if yes I do need an anti-virus program if anyone has suggestions on which is the best to run I would appreciate it.

Thanks
 
I will be running windows on my macbook and wanted to know if I will now need to install a anti virus program to protect it when running in windows mode?

Also if yes I do need an anti-virus program if anyone has suggestions on which is the best to run I would appreciate it.

Thanks

It's always a good thing to get some type of anti-virus program for windows. I use Win7 on BootCamp and run AVG Free. I don't do a lot with the Windows side, no emails or anything. If you do a lot I would suggest TrendMicro.
 
It's always a good thing to get some type of anti-virus program for windows. I use Win7 on BootCamp and run AVG Free. I don't do a lot with the Windows side, no emails or anything. If you do a lot I would suggest TrendMicro.

+1

I also use AVG free on my XP partition.
 
What I want to know is can viruses on your windows partition affect your mac partition at all. I would assume no, but who knows what the hell else windows has ****ed up -.-
 
What I want to know is can viruses on your windows partition affect your mac partition at all. I would assume no, but who knows what the hell else windows has ****ed up -.-

It shouldn't be able to affect the OSX partition, but if you have added Windows software that allows read/write access to the OSX partition, then it could theoretically at least erase files to screw things up. It could also mess up the partition table leaving the computer unable to read from either partition, especially since Widows viruses expect an MBR partition table and your Mac should probably have a GUID partition table which the virus can mess up just by trying to insert data.

I use the free Avast for my Windows virtual machine on my Mac.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.