What is the best FREE anti-malware program out right now?

Personally, I've been using Avast for years and it's absolutely amazing.

MalwareBytes Anti-Malware (MBAM) has detection and removal capabilities that exceed the best commercial antivirus products, but does not protect against attacks.

Microsoft Security Essentials (renamed Windows Defender in Windows 8) consistently places among the worst four in virus protection.

    AV-Test long-term (Sept '13 to Feb '14) results

http://www.av-test.org/uploads/tx_news/1_12.png

Microsoft Security Essentials ... and I say that hating everything Microsoft lol. It is very user friendly, all the default settings are logical so there is no need to try to figure out what anything means, it is not stupid in that it will not be constantly popping up asking you if you want to deny or allow things when you have no idea what on earth it is even referring to ... and it also takes very little resources you will not notice any slow down in system performance.

I was told by several techs to start using it 5 years ago and I have not had a single issue on my system at all, and I download a lot of content that is prone to having crap attached to it.

Hope this helps.

I think you should give a try to avast .... It's good...

Download it here...

http://www.filespackage.com/pc-softwares/anti-malw...

I have to "second" the MSE (microsoft security essentials) nomination. I use it, along with the paid version of MalwareBytes. They work well together.