ThunderBYTE Anti-Virus (TBAV) was an early

antivirus software Antivirus software (abbreviated to AV software), also known as anti-malware, is a computer program used to prevent, detect, and remove malware. Antivirus software was originally developed to detect and remove computer viruses, hence the name ...

product. It was created by Dutchman Frans Veldman in 1988, and published by his company, ESaSS B.V. It was mainly designed for

DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...

, but there were also versions supporting

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. TBAV was known for its fast scan speed, heuristics-based scanner, and Anti-Vir.Dat files tracking known-good file information (

checksum A checksum is a small-sized block of data derived from another block of digital data for the purpose of detecting errors that may have been introduced during its transmission or storage. By themselves, checksums are often used to verify dat ...

s). Originally ThunderBYTE used a dedicated ISA card to provide protection before the

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

was even loaded. Later, a software-only product was released, which soon displaced the hardware offering. It was distributed as

shareware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer. ...

. In 1998, TBAV was sold to

Norman ASA Norman Safeground AS is a developer of data security software, such as anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-spyware and backup with local support. The company headquarters is in Oslo, Norway. Norman Safeground has a global partner-network, and the main m ...

, which discontinued ThunderBYTE as a product.

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* * * * Antivirus software Antivirus software for DOS {{security-software-stub