Which Antivirus/Tune -up software would you recommened?

[connda]

I've been working / programming computers since the 80's

i won't give you advice, learn for yourself, research first, if

a program is free (IT ISN'T) it will be full of bloatware and

other tag along malware, the third world war is up and

running and we are all in it without knowing about it.

Protect yourself first, learn how to use your Virus program

well, learn how to set your computer to a previous time by

using System Restore, stop wasting your time playing games

and learn how to protect yourself and if anyone ever says,,

" I HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE"

Just curious, but when you worked in the industry and had a new employee to mentor, where the first words out of your mouth, "Read the 'man' pages"?

I worked in the computer industry for about 25 years. I was alwasys amazed at the amount of hubris displayed by individuals who considered themselves, hummmm, errrr, 'Special'.

I never told anyone I mentored to "read the man pages", or RTFM. That's just being ====== well, nevermind. Read between the lines.

[connda]

I must be the odd one out I used Nortons for years and never had any problems

Like Mydefrag: old, but still a sharp knife in the drawer. There are still command line utilities that I find useful.

[hawker9000]

Good idea to use only ONE antivirus.

Good idea to use 2 or 3 malware detectors.

Good idea to defrag about once a week.

I also use Glary utilities pro.

"Good idea to defrag about once a week."

UNLESS you have an SSD.

[Liquorice]

Avast Antivirus (free)

Advanced System Care 8 for Clean Up. (Free Version)

[YesWeCan]

Freeware - Sandboxie, Winpatrol, Defraggler. I use Netscape Navigator because it's old and nobody writes exploits and I let it run in a sand box with no virus issues since years.

[mikecat]

OK these are the tools I use to do my computer cleans.

1. Ccleaner

2. System Nynja

3. Super anti spyware

3. Malwarebytes

4. Free windows registry repair

5. Autoruns (good for stopping uneccesary programs from starting) also good for detecting missing registry entries etc.

6. Revo uninstaller that cleans the registry properly after uninstall.

7. ADW cleaner which gets rid of any unwanted toolbars and other hijacks on your browser.

When I have run all of these I use Drive the life which checks, updates and backs up your drivers.

Finally I run Erundt which backs up your registry.

All these tools are free, safe and easy to use, most of them portable and can be obtained from freewarefiles.com.

There are many such tools available but I have found these to be the most reliable and safest to use.

I use Auslogics defrag to defrag files and hard drive

[djlest]

here is what i do when i feel my system is slow, lagging or feeling sluggish.
1. Run windows updates and restart the machine
2. Install the following all free - CCLEANER - MALWAREBYTES
3. Option - SPYBOT search and destroy

Run CCleaner and it will clear your browser caches and all the other garbagage, if you want also run the registry cleaner option.
Then Run Malwarebytes and after that spybot

CCleaner will speed up any slow browser issues and the spyware apps will do the rest.

Normally win7 and Win8 has automatic defragging these days and its rarely an issue, but you can always right click your hard drives and run a defrag and error check just to be sure.

As to installing any utilities that say Computer tune up - i would avoid them - the above are all free and tried and tested apps for many years. No need to pay a penny.

I prefer NOD32 antivirus and firewall combined. I wouldnt trust any of windows firewalls or defender, whilst they have improved they still dont hit the mark in my opinion.

Also as mentioned REVO is a good unistaller. Its always a good idea to go through all your windows programs and take out the ones your not using.

Oh and a good trick is to play with your startup programs too, google disable startup progs, they can chomp a lot of memory in the background.

LESS IS MORE!

Edited April 28, 2015 by djlest

[GeorgeBrown]

here is what you need to do if your com is slow, lagging or feeling sluggish.

1. Run windows updates and restart the machine

2. Install the following all free - CCLEANER - MALWAREBYTES

3. Option - SPYBOT search and destroy

Run CCleaner and it will clear your browser caches and all the other garbagage, if you want also run the registry cleaner option.

Then Run Malwarebytes and after that spybot

CCleaner will speed up any slow browser issues and the spyware apps will do the rest.

Normally win7 and Win8 has automatic defragging these days and its rarely an issue, but you can always right click your hard drives and run a defrag and error check just to be sure.

As to installing any utilities that say Computer tune up - i would avoid them - the above are all free and tried and tested apps for many years. No need to pay a penny.

Thank's Everyone for the great advise!

I think the list below will clean up and tune up most machines.

CCLEANER -

MALWAREBYTES

SPYBOT search and destroy

Avg

​I would recommend everyone who would like to service there computers to run these programs to speed up there machine, I have along with some other recommended programs by other Thai visa members and my laptop is running much better.

Edited April 28, 2015 by GeorgeBrown

[nidieunimaitre]

I am sooooooooooooooooooooooo impressed by most posters.

They are soooooooooooooooooooooo good at computering.

Unfortunately, they have 1 shortcoming: as teachers / instructors /advise givers they suck big time.

[Thaddeus]

I must be the odd one out I used Nortons for years and never had any problems

Peter!... where you been

[Liquorice]

I am sooooooooooooooooooooooo impressed by most posters.

They are soooooooooooooooooooooo good at computering.

Unfortunately, they have 1 shortcoming: as teachers / instructors /advise givers they suck big time.

Anti Social, or just not User Friendly?

Congratulations, you've won a free T-Shirt for the most helpful post of the year.

[Lokie]

adwcleaner is a good tool to use, AVG has always had a good name, CCleaner of coarse, Spybot S&D works well.

I also use Advanced SystemCare .. it has all the bells & whistles adequate for complete PC monitoring and cleaning.

Me too, never had any probs with these freebie programs (system care is great as a general suite twice weekly, then the others weekly and as required) I also use Suoer antispyware, get my stuff from Majorgeeks site and their freebie picks... also lots of good advice on there

[humqdpf]

I got so tired of all this stuff with antivirus that worked well with this laptop and then badly with that laptop because of some conflict with some type of file or application and then I got a Mac. Never had a problem since. All I do is computing - I never have to worry about viruses. Don't seem to get malware either. And because they run on these new hard drives (that do not rotate), you don't have to worry about defrag either.

[MAJIC]

I Have been running Bitdefender Anti Virus free edition for about a year now,and i'm very impressed,it's unobtrusive,doesn't need a full scan( it's on guard all the time) so far it has quarantined 2 possible villains,but other than that no problems,if they nag me to pay for the program,I probably will, all these interfering Mac this or Norton' that take over your computer,can go and take a running jump off the pier! how many times i've paid for crap I dread to think, basically the programs are designed to keep popping up,and annoying while doing nothing! just to make the user feel they have good value for money1

[MAJIC]

I've been working / programming computers since the 80's

i won't give you advice, learn for yourself, research first, if

a program is free (IT ISN'T) it will be full of bloatware and

other tag along malware, the third world war is up and

running and we are all in it without knowing about it.

Protect yourself first, learn how to use your Virus program

well, learn how to set your computer to a previous time by

using System Restore, stop wasting your time playing games

and learn how to protect yourself and if anyone ever says,,

" I HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE"

Just curious, but when you worked in the industry and had a new employee to mentor, where the first words out of your mouth, "Read the 'man' pages"?

I worked in the computer industry for about 25 years. I was alwasys amazed at the amount of hubris displayed by individuals who considered themselves, hummmm, errrr, 'Special'.

I never told anyone I mentored to "read the man pages", or RTFM. That's just being ====== well, nevermind. Read between the lines.

The so called special programmers always lack vision, like the one who told me," There will never be a program to take dictation,from the human voice to a Computer"

[sirineou]

on an HP Envy laptop 8 GB ram which runs Win 8.1 I run Windows Defender, Never had a problem for about two years,

[NanLaew]

CCleaner for general application cleanup and registry cleanup.

MyDefrag for defragging the disk. Old but still a sharp knife in the drawer.

Antivirus? No 'one' application is a perfect solution. For free, try Antivir Free, Avast, or Malwarebytes. Suggestion? Run Avast in real-time, Malwarebyte free can only be run in scan mode so use it to double-check your system, download and run Antivir Rescue Disk which loads from CD/DVD or USB and runs the Ubuntu OS to run Antivir offline. Depends how through you want to be (or paranoid LOL). Or run a version of Linux, then you don't need antivirus software.

Also, don't bother 'tuning-up' your system especially when it starts to run really flaky.

Instead, reinstall your operating system, install all security patches, install your software (look up Ninite), update all your software security patches, and image your 'system drive'. Never run a "pre-installed operating system". Yeah, your local computer vendor will load it up with unlicensed copies of software you might want, but trust me, your getting more than you think you are (think about it hard). The first thing I do with a new computer? Repartition the hard-drive and reload the operating system, and then clone the freshly installed system image.

I'm assuming your using Windows. So the day after every Microsoft Patch Tuesday, reimage your system from the 'clean system image' you created after rebuilding your computer, update the operating system security patches and application patches, and your system will run like a champ. If your looking for free imaging software, search for 'alternatives to Norton Ghost' on the internet. There are free ones like Clonezilla. By the way, when you reimage your system, it essentially defrags the system (its about how the cloning software reads, stores, and rewrites the data). I can restore a cloned image in less than 15 minutes. It takes my defrag software about 1 to 2 hours depending on the amount of data on the drive and how defragged it is (which mine generally is not).

If you're afraid you'll mess up your system, go buy a cheapo, used desktop system for 2 or 3k baht (or whatever you consider to be 'cheapo') and get use to using that system as a 'Sandbox'. (Make sure its not too old. It should be able to boot a USB drive, minimum of 2GB memory, and don't worry too much about hard drive space - this is a play system, you shouldn't be storing much of anything on it. Load OSs (Windows and free OS like the multifude of Open Source variations of Linux), learn how to dual boot Windows and Linux, load various software, clone your successes, overwrite your failures, and learn. The best way to know what works best for you is to play, play, play -- then use techical forums to ask questions. Most of all -- Have fun!

I see that's your weekend taken care of then.

I got so tired of all this stuff with antivirus that worked well with this laptop and then badly with that laptop because of some conflict with some type of file or application and then I got a Mac. Never had a problem since. All I do is computing - I never have to worry about viruses. Don't seem to get malware either. And because they run on these new hard drives (that do not rotate), you don't have to worry about defrag either.

Verily.

[wcoast]

You cannot run multiple antivirus programs. I suggest Kaspersky AntiVirus. About $30 a year for multi year multi machine license. AVG if your unwilling to buy..you get what you pay for. Malwarebytes for cleaner. Forget any program that screws with your registry or promises a speedier PC. I know what I'm talking about.

[nidieunimaitre]

I am sooooooooooooooooooooooo impressed by most posters.

They are soooooooooooooooooooooo good at computering.

Unfortunately, they have 1 shortcoming: as teachers / instructors /advise givers they suck big time.

Anti Social, or just not User Friendly?

Congratulations, you've won a free T-Shirt for the most helpful post of the year.

QUOTE <<<< not user friendly >>>>

Exactly! That is what I dislike about computer specialists.

[GeorgeBrown]

Another tip to tune up your machine would be to make sure you only have programs that you need starting up when you boot (start-up) your machine.

To do this - Go to Run and type msconfig and click on start-up tap and disable any programs you don't need to start-up as these programs will run in the background and slow your machine down.

Or you can find this start-up tap by going to Task Manager.