Computer protection question, please.

[David Cramer]

Hello

My wife and I recently got a "newer" computer, HP x2207h (not from Best Buy). Best Buy sold us something called Trend Micro and Webroot Spy Sweeper to protect our computer, probably a mistake. Are Vista and Trend Micro incompatible? We cannot figure out the problem, but.....

1) It wants us to update quite often and takes a LONG time to be able use the computer while it's loading.

2) Everything is slow trying to turn the computer on and log onto the internet.

3) We never had this problem before.

4) When my wife removes it, the computer flys!!!

5) We don't go to "those" sites, which I know doesn't mean we are fully protected, but we assume we are cutting down the odds of a problem by going to sites we know and go to often.

6) Is there a good combination of things out there that will run with Vista and not be such a bloody hassle to do & protect us?

7) We used AVG before this, but we were told the free version doesn't really protect you. I am into power tools, not computers, so I am at their mercy. My wife is decent at them, but only has so much time to invest in figuring it out and she still thinks it's a Vista/Trend Micro incompatibility problem.

8) Suggestions?

Sorry if this has been asked before. If it has, please point me in the right direction and sorry for bothering everyone.

David

[Bob Moyer]

FWIW; I have a new HP laptop and a new desktop; both with Vista and I use Micro Trend Pro, initially I removed a lot of the crap that HP loads on their computers which are in the startup program.

Secondly, you probably are having a conflict between Webroot and Micro Trend; I am not familiar with Webroot but some Anti-Virus programs do not like company on a computer. Have you installed all the recent Microsoft updates? Between Microsoft and Microtrend there have been a lot of updated released to combat the conflicker virus.

Currently my HP laptop is great since I got rid of all the stuff, made sure all the updates are installed.

BTW - Do you have DSL? If you do what speed, some of the updates are large.

[Curt Harms]

remove or disable the factory crapware. I have Vista as part of a multi-boot disk on a Thinkpad notebook. It's uh..."stately" on startup. Time can be measured with an hourglass:rolleyes:. Once loaded and placed in standby it resumes reliably and quickly. I assume Vista was not designed with the intent of shutting down regularly but rather placed in a low power state. Personally I haven't used Vista in a few months; XP and Ubuntu Linux have been just fine.

Curt

[Jim Becker]

If Vista is running very slow, be sure that Google Desktop is not loaded on the machine...my Dell came that way and it was a major pig. I mention this because the slowness may not be attributable to the protection software; rather it could coincidentally be something else.

[Bob Moyer]

After giving this some additional thought; you probably have a lot of trial software on your computer; i.e. Microsoft Office; MSWorks, Symantec, AOL, etc.

You should remove all of it, another conflict problem you may have is firewall protection; I had an initial conflict with the Vista Firewall and the firewall from Micro Trend.

Symantec is sometimes tricky to remove; do a google search to see how to do it.

[Bruce Page]

I have purchased my last two home computers from a neighborhood “build to order” computer shop. I get exactly the configuration I want without any surprises. I make a point to tell them to load the OS only and I will take care of the rest.

Works for me

[Curt Harms]

How helpful is it to run as a restricted user, rather than with full administrative privileges? Is most malware able to work around the restrictions? I run as a restricted user except when administrative privileges are required. Is that helpful, or just an occasional PITA?

Thanks

Curt

[John Schreiber]

Even if you don't go to "those" sites, you must have anti-virus protection or soon someone else will own your computer and you will just be using it at their convenience. If you have Vista, I believe that it comes with a good firewall and I believe Window's Defender is free for you to use for anti-spyware.


7) We used AVG before this, but we were told the free version doesn't really protect you.
I'd bet that you were told this by the person who wanted you to buy other software. AVG works well. I'm now using Avira because my modem had a conflict with AVG. It works well, but has some annoying notices asking you to upgrade to the paid version.

[Scott Shepherd]

Nod32 from eset.com is benchmarked as being one of the least hoggish programs out there and it's also rated very well for it's effectiveness. I used Trend Micro for over a year and it was a P....I......G. Everyone day, come in, log on, come back in 15 minutes before I could use my computer. It just hogged all the resources at startup. Trashed it and got eset's security suite and now no issues. Computer comes right up, ready to use. Very nice program.

[Brad Wood]

After giving this some additional thought; you probably have a lot of trial software on your computer; i.e. Microsoft Office; MSWorks, Symantec, AOL, etc.

You should remove all of it, another conflict problem you may have is firewall protection; I had an initial conflict with the Vista Firewall and the firewall from Micro Trend.

Symantec is sometimes tricky to remove; do a google search to see how to do it.

+1 ... remove it all, everything you don't need, want, use, etc. Then put the stuff on that you do want.
systems built for consumes have so much crap on them it is hard to fathom. I haven't used a PC with a company loaded image on it for at least ten years. I've had relatively stable systems the whole time and I always marvel at the number of problems home users have with their "out of box" systems.
This isn't to say you are at fault by any means. I blame the manufacturers.

[Chuck Wintle]

You could try Ubuntu on your computer and be rid of the MS headache. :D

[Myk Rian]

Don't bother with Linux. Bad advice to someone that isn't a tech-head. I've been using computers since the early 70s, and have never found it useful.

Here's an excellent utility.
http://www.iobit.com/advancedwindowscareper.html?Str=download

BestBuy sells you junk just to make a sale. What is installed, go into the program options and see how often it is set to update. Change it to something manageable. Many programs are set to start when you turn the computer on. You may not want everything to do that.

Check Start - Programs - Startup
You can delete everything there. All they are is shortcuts.

[Scott Shepherd]

Don't bother with Linux. Bad advice to someone that isn't a tech-head. I've been using computers since the early 70s, and have never found it useful.



I totally disagree with that statement. I've been using computers since the 70's as well and if I sat you down in front of Ubuntu and didn't say a word to you about it, you'd never know you weren't running windows for the most part, as a home user. It's windows based, plug and play, and it works. Don't discount it until you give it a test run in today's settings. The Linux from 5 or 10 years ago is far far different than something like Ubuntu today.

[Eric Franklin]

My work was reselling AVG for the last year or so. We have found that since version 8, many viruses and malware has gotten through. After a lot of research and internal testing, we have settled on Vipre from Sunbelt Software.

[Myk Rian]

My work was reselling AVG for the last year or so. We have found that since version 8, many viruses and malware has gotten through. After a lot of research and internal testing, we have settled on Vipre from Sunbelt Software.
I've noticed ver. 8 takes forever to get going at boot-up.