Member Avatar for abrogard

I recently had a bad infection of malware/spyware/virus and tried many things to clear it and downloaded a few new progs to try as part of the whole thing.

One of these that seemed good was Avast - it found what nothing else found - and so I'm still running it. But I've always been running AVG, too and I was browsing these forums and saw a post where someone claimed you should only ever have only ONE anti virus prog.

Is this right would you say?

I've currently got Comodo firewall, AVG and Avast, Superantispyware and Peerguardian running from startup.

Is this collection okay would you say?

regards,

ab :)

  • 2 Contributors
  • 1 Reply
  • 145 Views
  • 8 Hours Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by jholland1964

Dani AI

Generated

Short answer: do not run two full-time antivirus engines together. has both Avast and AVG starting with Windows plus Comodo and other tools; that setup risks slowdowns, instability, and conflicted scans. is correct that only one resident AV and one firewall should be active at the same time.

Why this matters: modern antivirus products install low-level drivers and real-time hooks into file and network activity. Two such engines can interfere with each other, causing file access errors, missed detections, crashes, and heavy resource use. Running a second product as an on-demand scanner is fine, but two simultaneous shields rarely improves security and often makes things worse.

Practical cleanup and configuration steps:

  1. Pick one product for real-time protection based on recent independent test results, performance on your machine, and personal preference.
  2. Uninstall the other product cleanly (Control Panel uninstall, then reboot). If the program resists removal, boot to Safe Mode and try again or use the vendor removal utility. If the system is still infected, consider a bootable rescue scanner.
  3. If keeping the second AV for occasional checks, disable its resident/real-time protection and prevent it from auto-starting so it only runs manual scans. Verify only one firewall is enabled.
  4. After cleaning, update the OS, update definitions, remove old restore points, and change important passwords.

For extra assurance, use a reputable on-demand scanner or one of the online scanners referenced in community resources (see @PhilliePhan’s sticky). If unexpected behavior continues after uninstalling, remove both AVs and reinstall just the one you choose.

Member Avatar for jholland1964

In one word NO. The ABSOLUTE rule is only one anti-virus program running and one firewall. Now that is not to say that you cannot have two of them installed, though I personally wouldn't recommend that either since very often once you get an anti-virus program installed it is very hard to keep it from running.
The reason behind this is that often times they will end up battling each other, slow the computer AND often times let something onto the computer that shouldn't be there.
If you want to use more than one virus program to be certain there isn't anything the onboard program is missing then most will suggest also using an online anti-virus scanner, ESET Scanner for instance, is a very good one and highly recommended.
PhilliePhan has some good suggestions for online scanners in his sticky HERE

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.