Computer protection advice

truescot

I'm slighlty baffled by all the virusguard, frewall, adware etc etc stuff out there. At the moment I have AVG Antivirus. This runs every day and seems to make my computer run very slowly when it does so. It also takes well over 2 hours to scan. I cannot change the setting so that it runs for example every week.

Quite simply, is there any advice regarding what basic protection I should have on my PC and which free downloads I should use. If its of any relevance my PC is 2.93 Ghz and 1.23GB RAM.

superscaper

You should be able to change the scan settings. I've never set any AV program to scan daily. That's definitely OTT. At the moment I've installed Avast or Antivir on people's PCs. Last time I used a free firewall I preferred Comodo over Zonealarm. So not to appear hypocritical I'll say right now that I don't use them on my own PC, I pay for and use Eset Smart Security. At the moment I don't have any other security installed (only just reinstalled windows at the weekend) but I usually use something like Superantispyware in addition to that.

My PC is 1.5 GHz and 2GiB RAM. It does take a long time to scan (especially if I have tens of GiBs of games, music etc) but then I do it infrequently. The real time scanning is good enough protection in most circumstances, especially if combined with common sense safe [STRIKE]sex[/STRIKE] computer/browsing use.

aliEnRIK

You can set AVG to run weekly!
It should be AVG 8 as well and not 7.5 (They updated it a while back)
Assuming you have version 8 you need to do the following ~
Open it up. Goto TOOLS at top of page. Choose ADVANCED SETTINGS. Clik the '+' next to SCHEDULES and select SCHEDULED SCAN. Click to RUN AT A SPECIFIC TIME INTERVAL then choose your prefered day and time of day.
OR
You can untick the ENABLE THIS TASK box and run the scan whever you feel like it (Which is what I do)
Make sure you click APPLY then OK afterwards

Id also recommend SPYBOT and ADWAWAre and if you dont have one a decent FIREWALL (I use comodo)
If you want any help just let me know

tradetime

If you are behind a router with a built in firewall then likely Windows native firewall is adequate, particularly if its' Vista. but even XP's is fine I use it on my desktop.
Biggest favour you could do yourself is install an alternate browser to IE, such as Firefox or Opera and browse the web using a sandbox such as Sandboxie, and you'll be fine.
Above all, educate yourself a little. Knowledge is power, a little light reading
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/safe_web.html

truescot

Okay, so am I now sufficiently safe?

I have

1. AVG Free (set to run once per week)
2. Spybot
3. Comodo personal firewall
4. I am browsing the internet with Firefox (I have been for a couple of years) but now its through Sandboxie.

Anything else I need? And will Spybot and Comodo run automatically in the background or do I need to do regular scans/updates?
:rolleyes:

It's all a bit confusing to me...

Marty_J

Comodo will run constantly in the background, I think you'll need to run Spybot once a week or so.

I would also add Ad-Aware to your list. It'll pick up things Spybot misses and vice versa.

vyseyboy

Spybot generally doesn't do anything unless you ask it to... so manual updates and a manual scan approximately monthly, I'd say, unless you suspect you may have been infected with malware, in which case, straight away.

Comodo will run in the background... I think it auto-updates, but you might want to check that. It can certainly be set to auto-update, if that's what you want.

Sounds plenty safe enough to me, but as someone recently uttered here, only as safe as the pink fleshy thing behind the controls: i.e. not invulnerable, still adhere to common sense! (for example, re: unsolicited emails, dodgy downloads.)

tradetime

I'd say your pretty safe, just remember with sandboxie, if you have been surfing the web and want to do something like online banking, always empty the sandbox first and start with a clean one. Sandboxie simply isolates malware and prevents it from staying on your system or interacting with anything outside the sandbox.