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General discussion

Lost amongst the security vendors - suggests welcome

May 25, 2010 5:52AM PDT

About six months ago I gave my wife a top of the line HP PC running Windows 7, this machine has everything. She previously had an XP box which got so badly hit by malware that it needed a full reload, and as it was old I bought the HP. She does DB, web and other development work on it. I also bought Norton 360 with three licenses. I installed one on the new HP, one on her laptop and one on my father's machine. After many months the laptop slowed down so much it became, literally, useless. In reading reports I decided to uninstall Norton 360 and see if that improved things, but Norton would not uninstall. We had a terrible time and ended up hacking the registry and simply following a list of arcane commands which, eventually, seemed to get rid of Norton 360. The machine now works like a charm, fast and responsive. But it has no anti-virus.

My father, who lives a long way away, I recently found out has "returned" his computer to the person who sold it to him. He said it was completely unusable. I spoke with the person who reclaimed the machine and was trying to clean it up, he was having exactly the same problem I had with the laptop. He is going to wipe it and reinstall everything.

Now the HP is following suite. Slow, miserable and no joy at all to use. I have not yet tried to remove Norton.

Help!

What is a good program to use for this? What anti-virus will let me regain these machines and provide protection? I have read reviews on so many programs I am just confused as all heck - they ALL seem to have one problem or another, and lots of them claim to slow things down.

Any suggestions very gladly received.

Thanks - Lawrence

Discussion is locked

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Apologies in advance.
May 25, 2010 6:01AM PDT

I read your post and I ask for leniency here since it reads like you expect these security softwares to protect the machines. Sadly this is far from untrue. These only protect from known threats and are all after the fact and will not stop the user from clicking through and installing something bad. Look at the "AntiVirus 2010" and similar malwares. All these have the users clicking through to get the malware installed.

So there it is. Not a single product actually saved the user from themselves.

-> We are the last best defense.
Bob

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Well, the world is your oyster, as they say
May 25, 2010 6:10AM PDT

We can't really tell you want you should use as the choice is yours, and not all machines are the same. What works on one may not work on another.

As Bob says, we are the last defence, and I would say the best defence. I often refer to a list of "Tips for a smooth running system" by another member here, Jimmy Greystone;
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-12546_102-0.html?messageID=2834003#2834003

He has refined the list since then, but the general guidelines still remain true.

We need to look after our systems, and that means updated anti-virus and anti-malware scanners, regular (scheduled) scans with the anti-virus, and once weekly scans with the anti-malware scanners.

For my own part I use the following;

1] Firewall, anti-virus and anti-spyware, ZoneAlarm Pro. Daily scans with it's combined anti-virus and anti-spyware scanner

2] Malwarebytes' Anti-malware, regular weekly scans

3] Windows Defender, not so often scans.

But that is just my own choice. You will find many others here with different opinions and setups.

Good luck with your searching.

Mark

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As I see
May 25, 2010 1:38PM PDT

As I see my list of tips has already been referenced, I'll just give a quick cliff's notes sort of version.

Bob is spot on. At best, security programs are like stain resistant carpeting. They might buy you a few minutes if you spill some wine or grape juice, but you still have to be careful with your drinks on the carpet, and run like a madman for some paper towels if something does spill.

At the end of the day, the onus of security is on YOU. I don't care what kind of security program you have. You go running your mouth off in the wrong chat room or just start clicking on any random link that comes to you in an email, you're going to get burned.

The rest should be pretty well covered by my list of dos and don'ts conveniently linked to by Mark. It's not exactly difficult to keep your system running well, you just have to avoid certain programs and situations. The security programs you use are really of secondary importance... A distant second.

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Thanks
May 26, 2010 12:33AM PDT

Thank you folks for your help, and the list is excellent and I am pleased to see we do a lot of it, although not all. The PC has been hit twice seriously, the first time was from a site of sound files, a place we had been to before and which seemed a safe site, but one sound file that my wife downloaded INSTANTLY drove the machine crazy. I forget the security software that was running, but it instantly went ballistic but could not help the machine - I spent most of the weekend cleaning that one up. The second time - which event drove me to buy the HP - was also from a known site, and this time I could not clean it at all and through in the towel. Maybe if I had spent more time but I was reluctant to do so as the machine was quite old.

These are the type of events I would like to block, something that comes from a known site during the course of legitimate work. Likewise for my father's machine, he was googling sites to find out how to get rid of mice and he got hit with something. I was able to clean that one up but it took a couple of afternoons.

What sort of person gets a thrill by destroying my poor old papa's means of getting email and pictures from his family?

Sigh.

Thanks again - Lawrence

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Let me share one thing Web Of Trust.
May 26, 2010 1:07AM PDT

Since you were kind enough to share specific infection stories I have this one thing you should look at. "Web Of Trust."

Link to -> http://www.mywot.com/

This is something I have come to love.
Bob