PC Tweaking

Antivirus and Spyware

Don't leave your computer exposed!

Here you will find security software for your computer.
Listed, are most of the software offered by vendors. These free programs do work, some more effective than others. Since these vendors do offer free software, I will not publicly negatively comment on them.

To test these software, I rebuilt two older computers, and use them to surf the internet. I than do a virus/spyware scan weekly (again using free scanners) to see if any malware squeezed through. To see how these software handle threats, I use information from the following websites:
Malware blacklist
Select Real Security
Malware Domain List

You can email me for my personal opinion on any of these software.

Do we really need protection?

I assume that you are checking out this website because your computer has started operating at a snails pace.
Maybe you lost control of your web browser, no matter what link you want to connect
too, your web browser automatically redirects you to another site (hijacking).
If you do online shopping, you are open to hackers getting your credit card info.
On one particular computer I had to fix, it took 20 minutes to start up windows. Than when you clicked your mouse - it took 25 minutes to start the request, and almost 30 minutes to shut down. Now how can you accomplish anything this kind of speed?

So the question should be: "How can we go without protection?"

I listed the free software into six categories:

Antivirus and Antispyware Supplement protection to work with your current antivirus Malware Scanners Process Terminator Rootkit Scanners Firewall's Antispam

Here are some hints when using these security software:

Never use more than one antivirus software at at time, they may conflict with each other.
You can use your antivirus software along with a supplement antivirus program for an additional layer of protection against malware.
Normally most antivirus and antispyware programs have automatic updates. Do not disable this feature, or you will not have updated protection.
If the software fails to install, try and disable your firewall and antivirus during the installation time only.
Normally the free scanners require manual updates. Don't forget to manually update these scanners before you do any scanning, so you will have the current malware signature information.
You can download as many antivirus scanners as you want. You may also run multiple scanners at the same time. You will notice that one scanner may expose a malware that another scanner missed.
A freshly installed firewall will be a nuisance at first, whenever you run a program it will ask if you allow this function. Always click the remember box, so next time the warning box won't appear. After a while, the firewall will remember all your safe programs. Of course if you load a new program, the cycle repeats again, so click remember.
When you set the firewall security setting to it's highest level, you will notice more warning pop ups than normal. This can be annoying, so leave the security level to the default setting. The tradeoff, is that you will not have the highest level of protection capable with your firewall.
Some software tested did use a lot of resources (RAM usage), which can result in slowing down of your computer. This is most noticeable in computers that have little RAM (less than 500 meg).
Read the install window as you install these software. Some programs ask if you want to install additional features, such as another toolbar in your IE web browser. I usually uncheck this option.
When your computer is happy, everyone is happy! Stay clean!