[Dzjudz]

aVast! Home Edition FTW!

.

 

[MaZa]

Personally I leave those comercial programs alone, because there are free ones that do exactly same thing, are well kept up to date and easy to use. And sometimes, they are even much less resource hogs than some fancy looking comercial programs! (Norton/Symantec is one of the worst in that area! And not very reliable anymore either)


Avast Antivirus Home Edition, despite being free, is amongst best antivirus softwares with tons of features.

Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy make a combination that finds about every trojan, spyware and mallware program (stuff which are not usually normal virus scanners best side cuz they arent necessarily viruses in normal sense. that kind of stuff was also infesting your computer) when both kept up to date. And latter also has immunization database for making your computer more immune against more known auto-installing harmfull programs.

Zonealarm Free personal edition is excellent software firewall and easy to use with some common sense. There are other alternatives too, with better compatibility to some programs that Zonealarm MIGHT conflict with, but arent necessarily as user friendly. Combined with keeping my eyes open on what Im doing, I never had real problems, and if some problem have managed to get past somehow, removing them havent been a real chore.

 

[santiclaws]

Symantec's software is notorious for being a bloated resource hog. You can usually get better software for free. Several years ago I spent over an hour deleting all the little files and registry keys Symantec's software left behind after an uninstall necessitated by a showstopping crash of the very same software, which prevented me from going online. What really pissed me off is that Symantec knew about the problem, since the necessary cleanup was described in detail on their web site.

Haven't used Symantec since and have been much happier for it. Avast for virus protection, SyGate as a software firewall, Ad-aware for spyware removal do the same job as Symantec's products better, leave a smaller footprint, don't use up resources to the same extent, and are free.

 

[floydenheimer]

NOD32 is the best hands down if you want to pay for an AV.

Avast and Avira are great free AV software.

Spyware I just use immunization from SpybotSD and SpywareBlaster and really don't ever have to remove anything, they seem to block most stuff. Just update immunization once in a while to keep up with the new exploits.

Firefox + adblock plus is also a nice thing to have. If you need to use IE, try IE7Pro, it adds lots of extra functionality to IE including an ad filter. They also have someone that maintains an updated ad filter (file) in their forums here.

CCleaner is a great system cleanup app, free too. If you want a free defrag tool, I suggest getting ScanDefrag. ScanDefrag is just a launcher app for Windows Disk Cleanup, defrag (windows built-in or JKDefrag), scandisk (CHKDSK in Win2k and higher), and PageDefrag. It's really slick. I suggest adding JKDefrag to its program folder, you can also add PageDefrag to it as well to add pagefile defragmentation to ScanDefrag.

 

[MaZa]

Avira Antivir Personal is also good free Antivirus software and I used to use it, but its nowadays version shows POPUP comercials whenever you open your computer or update the virus database, marketing its comercial version that has some "amazing" (utterly useless is you ask me...) features compared to free one and I find it very annoying, making me turn to more effective (according to tests) and way less annoying Avast...

Ah yes, Spyware Blaster is also good. Not as necessary after Spybot added similar immunisation database, but still good extra.

 

[uraflit]

i used windows xp sp0 (yes, no sp packs!) for about 4 years on a machine with no antivirus or what not, only a firewall and had absolutely no serious problems whatsoever with viruses and adware.


of course, i have fixed my family/friend's comps, and i've found that adaware + spybot clears up the adware/spyware/worms, and trend micro online scanner gets rid of viruses. i use CCleaner only when completely necessary for registry cleanup.

no hiccups!

 

[Dzjudz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by uraflit /img/forum/go_quote.gif i used windows xp sp0 (yes, no sp packs!)

Why?

 

[oicdn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by warrior05 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Personally, $60 for software that really works is a bargain in my book. I think we (the general "we", not just the Head-Fi "we") have gotten a bit spoiled with freeware and the avenues one can take to get software for free. Obviously, you are paying for convenience for a 3 in 1 package but if it really does work (and I'm not claiming it does since I have no experience with it), I'm happy to support the individual or company.

Exactly, people are willing to risk trying a bunch of free softwares that may or may not be up to the task, simply because they are free. I have 3 programs now that not only detect/remove/block spyware, but I also have a registry cleaner and a program that optimizes performance NOMINALLY.

The other thing about Uniblue is they are a Microsoft Gold Certified partners. not many other programs have that sort of partnership with the OS. For whatever reason, that gives me a little peace of mind.

The other thing I got sold on Uniblue is that many of the reviews are on forums where the users are heavy gamers, or people have programs that are resource dependant, and it still gets glowing remarks and that it really works. And here is another post agreeing with all the reviews, that it is actually a VERY solid working program that gets the job done.

Now that I know it works, if I had to purchase it, I would have....I have nothing against freeware, but I personally don't think it's worth the hassle of hit and missing...it's part of the reason I stuck with Symantec Corp edition because it's been consistent throughout (whether superior or not), instead of trying to find the new FOTM virus software and using it then only having to switch a couple months later....

 

[Kirosia]

Quote:

Now that I know it works, if I had to purchase it, I would have....I have nothing against freeware, but I personally don't think it's worth the hassle of hit and missing...it's part of the reason I stuck with Symantec Corp edition because it's been consistent throughout (whether superior or not), instead of trying to find the new FOTM virus software and using it then only having to switch a couple months later....

It seems you're just trying to justify your purchase. The software mentioned is fairly tried and true, there's no "trying to find the new FOTM virus software". I had symantec as my first/main anti-virus for a long time, and it caused more problems than the stuff I use now. $60 isn't really a bargain if you can get better for less/free. You can argue convenience, but is it really that hard to learn how to work a computer?

Oicdn, you really need to be more open-minded. I've seen it in your other threads, you're reluctant to listen to others if it goes against your beliefs. We're only trying to help.

 

[floydenheimer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MaZa /img/forum/go_quote.gif Avira Antivir Personal is also good free Antivirus software and I used to use it, but its nowadays version shows POPUP comercials whenever you open your computer or update the virus database, marketing its comercial version that has some "amazing" (utterly useless is you ask me...) features compared to free one and I find it very annoying, making me turn to more effective (according to tests) and way less annoying Avast... Ah yes, Spyware Blaster is also good. Not as necessary after Spybot added similar immunisation database, but still good extra.

There's a way to turn off the popup from Avira Free using safe mode. It's pretty well documented.

SpywareBlaster still offers thousands of known baddies that SpybotSD doesn't, so I use them together.

 

[scompton]

I had Kaspersky for about a year. It force me to upgrade to the next version and I started having problems booting up. When I was able to boot, I had no internet access. Only way of getting rid of the problem was uninstalling Kaspersky. It's not software I'd recommend to anyone.

 

[Mike Wazowski]

Get a Mac.
(running away, head ducked)

 

[scompton]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike Wazowski /img/forum/go_quote.gif Get a Mac. (running away, head ducked)

The next computer I buy will probably be a Mac. I don't want to deal with Vista.

 

[MaZa]

Quote:

Originally Posted by floydenheimer /img/forum/go_quote.gif There's a way to turn off the popup from Avira Free using safe mode. It's pretty well documented. SpywareBlaster still offers thousands of known baddies that SpybotSD doesn't, so I use them together.

Oh! I didnt know that! Gotta try it again sometime. Avira is bit lighter than Avast so it might be worth switching sometime.

I know, SB knows baddies that Spybot doesnt (and Vice versa too), so its good to have both.


Quote:

It seems you're just trying to justify your purchase. The software mentioned is fairly tried and true, there's no "trying to find the new FOTM virus software". I had symantec as my first/main anti-virus for a long time, and it caused more problems than the stuff I use now. $60 isn't really a bargain if you can get better for less/free. You can argue convenience, but is it really that hard to learn how to work a computer?

Indeed. Programs mentioned here are very tried and true, and very famous amongst us hardcore computer nerds and have been such for YEARS. There is no need to switch around, those programs are there for REAL and are updated as frequently as comercial programs.

 

[analogbox]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike Wazowski /img/forum/go_quote.gif Get a Mac. (running away, head ducked)

Mac is not entirely virus free. There has been some Mac viruses floating around on the web recently. Also Mac is very vulnerable to web hacking. It wasn't long ago when Macbook Air got cracked within minutes along with windows. My advise? Go linux.