anti virus

[darmitage1215]

whats better anti virus, nortons or AVG?kind of weir because AVG is free

[PrntRhd]

Look to mjc's sticky post re AVs:
http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=15179

AVAST and AVG are free and actually do well.

NOD32, Kaspersky, & Antivir are all really good paid AVs.

The popular McAfee and Norton (all pay) AVs work but demand more resources, also both are extremely resistant to removal later should you decide to switch to something else.

MS' One Care is not yet ready for prime time, IMHO.

[darmitage1215]

whats the best free adware and spyware programs?

[PrntRhd]

whats the best free adware and spyware programs?
The sticky post has that information also.

[darmitage1215]

sorry didn,t notice it, thanks!

which is better and more sufficent for spyware and adware, adware SE or spybot? which one do you recommand

[Jiggy]

"adware SE or spybot"

I use both.

[PrntRhd]

I used to use AdawareSE and Spybot with Immunization, but after immunizing with SpywareBlaster those programs never found anything, since the malware never gets installed. Firefox with the NoScript extension also helps keep malware infections away.
I still do a routine scan with Spybot just to be sure nothing sneaks in.

[darmitage1215]

just don,t understand something thats off the topic, whats the sense of having high speed if Internet Explorer 7 is a little slow at opening up web pages! I have high speed so I can download and surf faster!
and now I am warned not to remove Internet Explorer 7 because I have downloaded certain programs and the pop up says they won,t work if I uninstall Internet Explorer 7! can someone please help me on this

[PrntRhd]

just don,t understand something thats off the topic, whats the sense of having high speed if Internet Explorer 7 is a little slow at opening up web pages! I have high speed so I can download and surf faster!
and now I am warned not to remove Internet Explorer 7 because I have downloaded certain programs and the pop up says they won,t work if I uninstall Internet Explorer 7! can someone please help me on this
What programs that require IE7?
Understand that IE7 does phishing filtering but that can be adjusted if you desire.
What popups are you getting, the exact message would help.

[darmitage1215]

how safe would it be to disable phishing filtering?

the programs are

security updates for windows xp
hotfix for windows xp
security updates for internet explorer 7
hotfix for windows media format
updates for windows xp
microsoft compression client pack for windows xp
realplayer
rich fx player
adobe flashplayer 9 active
windows media 11 runtime

windows media 11
microsoft media mode driverframework feature pack 1.0
applesoftware update
J2SE runtime environment 5.0 10 and 11
adobe reader 8
this is what all came up on the popup that won,t work or could not work if I deleted IE 7

[classicsoftware]

You should NOT unistall IE7. Using IE6 is NOT SAFE.

You are better off using Firefox (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/) and leaving IE7 to Windows Update.

[darmitage1215]

so if I click disable phishing filtering, will that help and be safe?

[classicsoftware]

You are disabling a safety feature:(

[darmitage1215]

what exactly can happen if I disable phishing filter?

[Budfred]

You will not be warned if you receive an email that is a phish... If you are not pretty careful about understanding phish and other security issues, it is a good idea to keep it on... I also doubt it is a major resource drain...

You have old Java versions which leave you vulnerable... I suggest you remove them and maintain the latest version:

Updating Java:

Go to Start > Control Panel double-click on the Software icon > add/remove programs.
Search in the list for all previous installed versions of Java. (J2SE Runtime Environment.... )
It should have next icon next to it: http://users.telenet.be/bluepatchy/miekiemoes/images/javaicon.gif
Select it and click Remove.
Then Download and install the newest version from here:

http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp



Most of the other things you listed should be running once and then not taking any other resources... If those things are all running at Startup or in resident mode, that is not necessary and will drag your computer down... Do you know if that is the case??

If you use FireFox as suggested, it will generally use a lot less resources than IE...