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While it the free version technically isn't really an antivirus, Malwarebytes is what I've got.

I've never used an anti-virus. (I do use MBAM to do a periodic check every once in a while)

For AV, OK, I have used it- There was a time I used one for a month.

In 2006, there was a nasty strain of Virut-32 Sality going around. This is a File Infector virus; effectively, the way it works means that merely accessing an executable file would infect it. I discovered my system was infected when my text editor at the time would not let me edit files- it would constantly ask "The file on disk has changed. Reload File"? (Or a similar message). I did some checking and found that none of my windows files passed verification through signing in Process Explorer; which itself, also, did not pass signing. I shortly found I was infected with the malware.

I first tried a Repair Install of Windows. This didn't work, because there were infected executables that would get run at startup which would infect the rest of the computer, going back to square one.

So I reinstalled Windows on my C: drive. I left my secondary Drive alone, however. I eventually executed an executable on that drive that was infected, though, and re-infected the system. Third times the charm- I did the same thing, but this time I deleted every single executable and dll file that was on my secondary drive. As a precaution, I installed Avast! to hopefully alert me if I was to accidentally run an infected file.

Then a few days later I was checking out a CD I burned and ran a program I had built to check it out and got infected again. Avast! did nothing. I found an online tool that claimed to disinfect the system, but discovered that all it did was allow the malware to infect every single executable again since it was accessing them all.

THIS TIME I did the same thing- formatted my system disk, and erased all executables on the data drive. However, as a precaution I went through ALL my data discs and ran the scanner tool on it while the system was clean to determine which CDs and DVDs that I had burned contained infected executables, and threw any that had any positives.

Starting with Vista, I have literally never had an AV program installed. Remote exploits and infections that take hold with zero user interaction are so rare that when they do occur they are usually zero-day and an AV program won't do anything anyway. The main way that systems get infected is when users let their guard down.

You know those download sites that offer tools or even pirated software and say something like "Your AV will flag it as Win32.SuperDangerousVirusx86-64, but it's a false positive so just disable your AV when you install it"? Don't believe them.

If you DO use an AV, you should be trusting it. The entire point of the AV is to work when your own judgement fails. If all it takes to workaround your AV security is for somebody giving you malware to just say "oh yeah it's totally legit" then what purpose does it serve?

Another key is to have UAC *enabled* and actually pay attention when it shows up.

When you download an executable, and run it, and you get a UAC prompt- Does that program truly need Administrator permission? What does it do? Because 9 times out of 10 if the function the program needs to perform doesn't actually require administrator permissions, it only wants it so it can install malicious software or otherwise infect the system.

Trojans are by and large the biggest way people get infected; not Windows Security Exploits or remote code execution. And most of the people who would most benefit from AV software are perfectly willing to disable it if the site they download the trojan from says "yeah it's legit".