protection and sound qu

[gravytrain]

hey all,

i've finally got my machine up and running now, and just wanted to say a big THANKS to all you guys for your advice (and patience). The forum's been a great help, so thanks again :)
Just two quick questions....
i'm using zone alarm (free) firewall, avg av and firefox...but also ms antivirus and spywareblaster. Are these last two things necessary or overkill?

also

i'm using some crummy no-name speakers with sub-woofer and it sounds terrible...too much bass etc. When I click on the sound effect icon on the xp desktop manager it doesn't have an option to select 2.1 sound (which i understand to be 2 speakers and a sub). does anyone know another way to set up my speakers to optimise the sound (perhaps with another program) or am i just getting what i did (or indeed did not) pay for?

thanks

[PrntRhd]

i'm using zone alarm (free) firewall, avg av and firefox...but also ms antivirus and spywareblaster. Are these last two things necessary or overkill?
I hope you actually mean MS Antispy, not AV. You only want one resident AV on a PC at a time.
SpywareBlaster is very good to install if you allow Internet Explorer to run as it sets Active-X limits to safer settings when contacting known infecting websites.
ZA free is OK, much better than the Pro in some respects (bloat). Sygate and Kerio are also good choices for free firewalls.
AVG is fine. Avast is also fine.
Firefox is great for an alternate browser, it has no Active-X which keeps the spyware that uses that route off your PC. You can add Extensions to Firefox to give you more functionality, and Themes to make the browser look and feel how you wish.

[gravytrain]

thanks PrntRhd,

so if I'm not using IE anymore do I really need SpywareBlaster? Would regular scans like TrendMicro do the job?

[gravytrain]

...I guess what I mean is will it slow things down too much?

[PrntRhd]

SpywareBlaster does not get in the way, it sets some settings and does not have a performance hit. It also protects if a guest clicks IE and goes to the Internet, and helps with tracking cookie permissions for IE and Firefox.
TrendMicro is AV like AVG, we recommend occasional online TrendMicro Housecall scans as a doublecheck for the AV.

[Fruss Tray Ted]

What do you have for a sound card? Onboard? AC97? nVidia? etc?

If it's AC97, there's sound effect, equalizer, Speaker configuration, etc, all from a left click of the mouse. If you right click and choose Multimedia, you can click on the audio tab and then volume and adjust some of the settings down a little if you are getting distortion due to overpreamplification.

Usually you get the best sounds by having your power amps turned up near or all the way up and trimming the inputs back to where the decibels are where you want. So if there is some knob on your 2.1 speakers, turn that up and then adjust the sound qualities in the 2 places I've mentioned to stop distortion.

If you have some other type of sound device onboard or card, post back and we'll look for other options.

Edit:
Set it to 2 speakers Desktop type for now. The sub should work fine with that setting. It is how mine is set to but I have it cabled to my 5.1 Home Theater system.

[pop pop]

The protective armor you have there is good. I would throw in Ad-Aware SE, it has been shown that a blend of antispyware apps is really the most effective way to go--what one misses, the others may find. I have not had a virus or spyware problem on my personal machines in a long, long time. Here's what I have and what I do:

AVG
Sygate
Spybot S&D
SpywareBlaster
Ad-Aware SE Plus (this is the pay version but I only recently went that way)
TrojanHunter (pay version)
MS Antispyware Beta
------------------------
And of course, I use FireFox and only go to IE for Windoze update or certain site that absolutely require it.


I keep these available for use as needed: HijackThis and CCleaner

I keep everything updated that does not update itself. I schedule regular AV/trojan and spyware scans or I run them manually. About every two weeks I run an online AV scan at Housecall or Bitdefender. They haven't found anything in a long time but it's always interesting to see the TOTAL number of files on my PC (one million at last count).

[gravytrain]

Fruss Tray Ted,

I have onboard sound...and have selected 2 ch sound which is fine for the speakers but doesn't recognise the sub...i may have to get more info and get back to you.

[gravytrain]

sorry, it is ac97...should the sub be recognised on 2 ch setting? Is it better to go 6 cha where my sub is recognised?

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Here, I use a stereo input to my Home Theater and all the speakers connect on the backside of the subwoofer. So all I do is use a stereo 2 wire setup and let the theater do the rest. Your case sounds different than mine.

If you have to plug the sub into the back of the pc, I think you are correct that you should use 6.1 because you can put the fronts to the 2 small speakers and use mic in for the out to the subwoofer (and center if you had one).

Does the subwoofer have a plug for the wall for household current (AC)? If so, you need to use it and if there is speaker connections on the back of the sub, you need to use those with your front speakers and do as I did above.

[gravytrain]

thanks all.
hey pop pop, i just downloaded spyware blaster and ad aware se and the latter found some things spyware missed...thanks for the tip