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Question

What kind of anti virus should I have?

Oct 23, 2012 12:30PM PDT

Have Windows Vista Home Premium SP2 Dell Inspiron 6400. Nothing fancy; use it for email, general net use and watching sports.

I recently received the following message "Couldn't start the Security Essentials service: The specified service does not exist as an installed service".

Read that the MSE is horrible so I ran "rkill" and then ran Malwarebytes Anti Malware. Then I ran Superantispyware.

Will uninstall MSE so what anti virus program should I have? Is Avast still good?

Discussion is locked

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Answer
The final choice is really yours to make:
Oct 23, 2012 1:47PM PDT

Many flavors; suites, free and paid, free antivirus, paid antivirus and so on.

Whatever you decide, here is a link to a company that performs comparison tests between antiviruses here: http://www.av-comparatives.org/ One of many such 'independent' testing labs available.

It is a good guide to use to make your best decision.

NOTE: As long as you appear not to have an antivirus, suggest using another computer to post here until this issue is fixed on the other computer.

To completely remove all traces left over from uninstalling any antivirus program, go here: http://singularlabs.com/uninstallers/security-software/ Uninstall first by Add/Remove or Programs and Features, then use the vendor uninstaller to clean up the rest.

Be sure to reboot after to ensure all old files are removed. Removing all old files is important to prevent conflict, and improve stability and performance with whatever you choose for your new install.

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Answer
What else should I have besides Avast or AVG?
Oct 24, 2012 9:21AM PDT

Thanks so much. I have SuperAntiSpyware and Malwarebytes Anti Malware right now. Wondering if there are any conflicts with various programs.

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Cross posting.
Oct 24, 2012 9:30AM PDT
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Re: What else should I have besides Avast or AVG?
Oct 24, 2012 5:50PM PDT
You can't have both antivirus programs installed and running. Just covering that to avoid some possibly serious problems in the future.

Two running antiviruses will cause conflicts, unlike having two antispyware programs not set to provide active real-time protection.

You are looking to avoid conflicts, so....

Best advice is, run only one antivirus program that is active and resident, and only one antispyware program that runs in real-time protection. You can have as many antispyware programs as you wish, but run only one as the active real-time one. Either Malwarebytes is the Pro version or SUPERAntispyware is the Pro version, but not both.

Your choice.