06-12-2009, 10:23 PM
Despite D's protests, I do recommend Free AVG for my XP/Vista customers. I use it and rarely does anything get past it. Turn off the browser link scanner to decrease the resource usage (which isn't nearly as bad as some of the other programs anyway).
I recommend AVAST! for people with operating systems older than XP (because Free AVG doesn't work on them). I don't much like AVAST, because I have seen it cause weird problems with people's email clients, as well as not picking up simple stuff that AVG DOES clean up.
Spybot S&D is a good anti-spyware program, it's what I use and recommend for my clients. It isn't much of a resource hog.. I run both it and Free AVG on my machine and it's not a new machine (P4 2.9Ghz, 2GB RAM). If you turn off the 'teatimer' option, it uses even fewer resources.
MalWare Bytes is good for certain things... sometimes I will install it on a customer's machine to scan for stuff if there is obviously something going on and the other programs won't pick it up, but I don't use it personally.
I'm also using BlackIce Defender now, which is a firewall and helps to keep nasty stuff from creeping in.
Honestly though... once your system becomes infected with crap, it's way better to reformat your HD and reinstall fresh than to fuss with trying to 'remove' viruses, which usually leave behind errors and junk that slow your system down anyway, even if you manage to remove them.
Restoring your computer to the 'factory settings', using the restore partition, isn't such a great idea with viruses either, since viruses CAN come back when you do it that way, I've seen it happen. The only way to really get rid of some viruses is to completely wipe out all partitions, repartition the drive, reformat the drive and reinstall the operating system fresh.
I recommend AVAST! for people with operating systems older than XP (because Free AVG doesn't work on them). I don't much like AVAST, because I have seen it cause weird problems with people's email clients, as well as not picking up simple stuff that AVG DOES clean up.
Spybot S&D is a good anti-spyware program, it's what I use and recommend for my clients. It isn't much of a resource hog.. I run both it and Free AVG on my machine and it's not a new machine (P4 2.9Ghz, 2GB RAM). If you turn off the 'teatimer' option, it uses even fewer resources.
MalWare Bytes is good for certain things... sometimes I will install it on a customer's machine to scan for stuff if there is obviously something going on and the other programs won't pick it up, but I don't use it personally.
I'm also using BlackIce Defender now, which is a firewall and helps to keep nasty stuff from creeping in.
Honestly though... once your system becomes infected with crap, it's way better to reformat your HD and reinstall fresh than to fuss with trying to 'remove' viruses, which usually leave behind errors and junk that slow your system down anyway, even if you manage to remove them.
Restoring your computer to the 'factory settings', using the restore partition, isn't such a great idea with viruses either, since viruses CAN come back when you do it that way, I've seen it happen. The only way to really get rid of some viruses is to completely wipe out all partitions, repartition the drive, reformat the drive and reinstall the operating system fresh.