Run Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware Programs Simultaneously or Sequentially ?

jjscotman

Hello

I am a "silver surfer" with limited computer knowledge and would greatly appreciate help.

I have an anti-virus program as well as several anti-spyware programs.

Every week I run a scan with each of them.

But this takes quite a while as I run them sequentially (one after the other).

To save time I was wondering whether I can safely run them simultaneously or whether this will adversely affect the quality of the scans or cause other problems.

I think my laptop can safely cope with the workload as I have an Acer 5920G and operate Vista Home Premium with SP1.

Advice from more knowledgeable forum members would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks !!

espresso

Personally I would run them separately but I would not run them every week as this is unnecessary.

Browntoa

2nd vote for same

shadowdragon

agree if you have active scanning running on your AV and scan all downloads (which I do, from ANY Source), once a week can be a bit excessive if your only surfing the net and doing a bit of word processing (for example). I tend to do a full maitenence on average once a month (which includes a good dusting and physical check of the PCs) and dont have any problems. I run my scans and go watch a film or TV and pop back to check on it periodically.

Reggie_Rebel

What programs are you running?

jjscotman

I run Avira Anti Vir plus on the anti-spyware side I have Ad-aware, Spybot and Windows Defender as well as CA Anti-Spy on the Yahoo Toolbar.

Perhaps overkill but I like to be sure my laptop runs clean.

All free programs of course !!