Hey, I just wanted to know if there are any GOOD and SAFE programs that can be bought or downloaded that help with the security of your PC. I had Norton AntiVirus, however its been out of date for a long while, and only recently has my computer deteced a virus.

I was thinking about getting Norton renewed, however I heard that Norton isnt really all that great, since it can actually slow the computer down with the many programs that it runs (not too sure about this.). I was looking into Symantec, however wanted the opinion of what you guys here believe is best before coming to a solution.

Thanks

AVG AntiVirus Free edition (Not the antispyware, that costs money) . Uses much less memory than norton and in my expeience is just as good. Has caught many viruses for me. Free for non-commercial use.

Right now the best commercial antiviruses are Mcafee (but its slow like norton) and Nod32

I have to agree with the use of AVG, it not only has a much smaller foot print, it is much user more user friendly.

btw jbennet, AVG antispyware is free.

I wouldn't stop with just the anti virus and spyware, I would also go for Spybot search and destroy, Adaware, Asquared, and Zone Alarm for a firewall. They are all free and work well.

jb, did you find that grub trying to maul your winlogon.exe, or was it something else?
AVG 7 is a great AV, I rarely do AS scans - only when i suspect something is amiss..., Spywareblaster is a good blocker, and either ZA or Kerio as walls.
jb... how much wear would a daily AS scan do to your HD? - more, i suspect, than a boot..? wondering....

I dont think it would do that much damage (do you know that by default xp starts defragging your disk when idle?)

and no it wasnt grub (what made you say that?) i think it was malware. I just did a repair reinstall and fixed it.

also AVG AS free isnt totally free. It goes to a reduced state after 30 days (no resident shield, rendering it kinda useless)

"a" grub.... yeah, malware is what I meant, not GRUB the loader.... Good going - any idea what it was?
Yep, AVG AS becomes a manual scan only tool, not a guard, if you don't pay. But that does me cos I don't trawl for trouble. And yes, I rather like the way XP tidies itself up when idle- it notes what you do with prefetch files etc, and then puts the most-used bits close to the edge, or whatever, to make them more accessible. It uses layout.ini in prefetch folder - ppl who delete the prefetch contents lose that advantage. But xp builds the file again.

AVG scans live and updates each day, what have you been smoking?

AVG AS 7.5 [free] is manual update only after 30days.. and is manual scan only [resident shield is disabled]... which anyway is what i want.

I have been using the 7.5 version free download since it came out and it scans every morning at 8:00 am and updates about thirty minutes latter. It also automatically scans email. What did you do to **** yours off?

Edit: I have two neighbors that are using this and a girlfriend that I put this on two months ago and all scan daily and update automatically. Are you sure you haven't disable these features?

If you want a good freeware AV try Avast, it's free and all you do is register it every 14 months and you get update everyday automatic and it has 7 different sheilds, as for free scanning tools I use SpyBot, and Ad-Aware and you can find all of thoughs at Download.com for CNET.

Hope this helps,
vnatech