Bitdefender and Kaspersky are probably the two best AV options possible. Bitdefender Free is very good, considering that it is basically the same as the paid version but with some features missing. Just make sure to turn off the special offers popups in the settings, because they can get quite annoying because of how big and common they are. Also, went down a cyberthreat rabbit hole and I just wanna better understand how to investigate stuff, so i dont have to rely on an antivirus as much. So if i accidentally run malware I could somewhat stop it. You shouldn't rely on your antivirus for safety anyway. Even though forensics can be useful to determine if the device is infected, your role as the user is not to allow infections to happen in the first place. The antivirus should be the second layer of defence. The first one should be your own common sense. Usually once the malware executes, the damage is already done. Stuff like infostealers work instantly, sometimes even before the AV realises what's going on. So, it's more important to be careful while downloading things off the internet, never download sketchy stuff, make sure you download from official websites, check in virustotal etc. Forensics aren't really that useful unless you work in cyber security, for an average user it's just easier to wipe the drive and reinstall OS when there's a suspicion of malware. But if you want to learn something about forensics anyway, you can learn how to use Process Explorer, Autoruns and Process Monitor, all from Sysinternals suite. I believe that PC Security Channel on YouTube has some videos about those. They also have other forensics tutorials. Answer from MattC041 on reddit.com