Anti Viral Advice Needed Please

davidsonsl

Advice needed please, I have always used Norton to protect my PC but was talking to someone recently who said save your money and use Avast, my Norton Anti virus was due for renewal and so I cancelled and installed Avast, I still have Norton Firewall but I am currently having loads of problems with my internet connection, my husband thinks it's due to Avast not being up to scratch, we are also concerned that it does not have suitable virus protection and as such have been infected which is causing the slow running and non running at times of our system/internet - any advice is greatly appreciated.

espresso

Unless you have completely uninstalled Norton anti-virus before installing an alternative you will have problems due to conflicts. i.e. you can't simply no longer subscribe to Norton and install Avast. Only one anti-virus should be used.

Goitster

Personally I would uninstall all of Norton. I use AntiVir to combat virus. THis is free and I have never had a problem. I also use Zone Alarm which is a free firewall and has good reports (Make sure you go for the free version and not the professional.)

There are also many free anti spyware programmes

Ad aware
sp bot
spyware blaster
a squared

All these need to be updated and used regularly.

With these in place you should be reasonably well protected.

Good luck

nickj_2

i've used agv and never had a virus or any problems with it

Browntoa

I'd go with nortons Firewall being the problem as well

davidsonsl

Goitster wrote:

Personally I would uninstall all of Norton. I use AntiVir to combat virus. THis is free and I have never had a problem. I also use Zone Alarm which is a free firewall and has good reports (Make sure you go for the free version and not the professional.)

There are also many free anti spyware programmes

Ad aware
sp bot
spyware blaster
a squared

All these need to be updated and used regularly.

With these in place you should be reasonably well protected.

Good luck

Thanks, I have uninstalled everything and installed Antivir & Zone Alarm, should I install anything else? is this all I need to do now?, will the update automatically ect????

Reluctant_spender

HAve you totally removed Nortons - Norton/Symantec do have a removal tool on their site.

I would use this to make sure it is gone for good. - http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/nav.nsf/docid/2001092114452606

Goitster

When I boot up my machine I always manually update the antivir, although it will do it auto. You will find there are updates almost everyday.

Zone alarm will tell you when there is an update available, you just need to follow the process manually. These updates only hapen once in a while.

If you have not got it the windows defender is worth getting, thats a freebie too.

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx

davidsonsl

Goitster wrote:

When I boot up my machine I always manually update the antivir, although it will do it auto. You will find there are updates almost everyday.

Zone alarm will tell you when there is an update available, you just need to follow the process manually. These updates only hapen once in a while.

If you have not got it the windows defender is worth getting, thats a freebie too.

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx

Thanks, have installed that too - am having a problem with a zone alarm update though, it keeps trying to initialise and then saying it has been denied access - what am I doing wrong?

davidsonsl

Not to worry now, managed to install it by turning of AntiVir temporarily.