Help with computer anti-virus.
Well everyone is telling me that Norton slows down your computer a ton and my computer is very slow (and its fairly new). So I've gone through and tried to delete a lot of useless stuff. Norton is one thing I want gone. I downloaded something called "AdWare/Ad-aware". It was trusted by a lot of people so I tried it. It worked with scanning until a certain point when it was scanning it's own file (suspicious), then it said "This program has stopped working correctly" and it closes out. I re-downloaded it and the same thing happens.
Can anyone tell me why? Also what are good alternatives to Norton?
Thank you ^.^
December 24, 2010
1 Comment • Newest first
All of that "Oh, program xxxx slows down your computer and program yyyy uses all your RAM and program zzzz just sucks..." stuff is just a bunch of "urban myths".
They wouldn't be able to sell a program that "everybody knows slows down your computer" because no one would buy it.
You need to keep your hard drive maintained by running the Windows tools that are built-into Windows to keep it clean, error free and running at peak performance, and you need to scan the system regularly to be sure nothing evil is infecting it and slowing things down.
You also need to keep an eye on what programs you have installed, and how many of those programs are needlessly wasting CPU power by starting every time you start Windows, whether you use them or not.
You should also be aware of the difference between an "Anti-Virus" program and an "Anti-Spyware" program. You actually need BOTH to keep your computer safe, because each one is optimized to find a specific type of "malware". Anti-virus scanners find viruses, and anti-spyware scanners find spyware (which includes keyloggers and trojans).
Norton is an anti-virus and AdAware is an anti-spyware. You shouldn't substitute one for the other, you should use them BOTH.
I used to use AdAware, but it got pretty bloated over the years so I switched to "Malwarebytes Anti-Malware", which is probably the most popular anti-spyware program at the moment. I also use "AVG Free" for my anti-virus program. Everyone has their own favorite anti-virus program, so you'll probably hear a lot of opinions for other programs. The most important thing is to have ONE of each type of program (anti-virus and anti-spyware) and to USE them regularly.
Also be aware that Norton, being a commercial program, requires you to BUY a "subscription" to it's updates every year. You MUST update both anti-virus and anti-spyware programs before you run them each time so that they will be able to find all the NEW malware that has come out. If your Norton subscription has expired, it means you're no longer protected, and must PAY for another year of updates.
AVG Free by comparison (as well as most of the other free anti-virus and anti-malware programs) comes with FREE updates. It just depends on whether you want to pay yearly for the protection.