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
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

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