Will having too many antivirus programs be bad?

Currently I've installed zonealarm firewall, avg, avast, and spyware doctor on my notebook. The question i have is whether having all of them installed interfere with each other making things worse OR will it add protection to my computer as i thought?

Also after i updated to the new version of zonealarm, i having not gotten a single intrustion block. Normally i would be bombarded with intrusion blocks, so is there something wrong or is the new update that gd?

 

I have all of what you have and even more. I run zonealarm and avast simultaneously without any problems. The rest, I just do a manual scan individually at the end of the week instead of having them run all at once. Hasn't caused any problems here.

 

Just make sure they aren't set to scan automatically together. Multiple AV scanners together can cause major performance problems, as well as possibly crashing or malfunctioning.

 

You shouldn't be running the real-time protection of both AVG and Avast at once. Having one firewall, anti-spyware, and antivirus running simultaneously is fine, but you shouldn't have 2 of anything running at the same time.

 

av software and firewalls aren't like web browsers and media players. you should only run one per computer. pick an avg, pick a firewall, and stick to them. running multiples is a good way to a.) crash your computer, and b.) completely block your internet connection.

 

thanks for all the replies...but could anyone answer my question about not getting a single intrusion in Zonealarm?

 

if it's like the beta, it's because you selected a setting telling zonealarm to automatically manage that stuff during setup.

 

It could be the sites you reguarly visit aren't as dangerous now, or ZoneAlarm is better (and won't make a big deal about doing its job right). I run Norton Antivirus 2007 on my PC (not my choice! Just forced to use it ) and I never get any popups telling me "We were so great, we caught a virus and blocked us! Applause please!" . I wouldn't worry about it.

 

It's overkill if you have lots of antivirus/firewalls running. Might actually do more harm due to potential conflicts. Wouldn't it be funny if each programs detects the others as viruses!

 

Trend Micro: "We have detected a threat to your personal security/our wallets and we took the courtesy to disable Norton for you"

I thought running a new AV program required you to disable the other one, doesn't it? That's why I never "try out" Trend Micro, because I'd have to disable Norton.

 

Unless you're running Norton 2007, Sam, giving Trend Micro a "try out" is probably an excellent idea. If yours is an earlier version of Norton, I think you'll find Trend Micro to be a great improvement.

Each probably protects computers well enough, but TM is not as great a system hog as the old Norton program, IMHO.

 

Yes, you're absolutely right. I don't really like Norton, I prefer Trend Micro and I have quite an interest in Kaspersky as well. But buying antivirus isn't my decision, so my opinion/interest doesn't matter .

 

Exactly, all you need basically is a firewall and an anti-virus. Anti-spyware, you can either just run manually, such as spybot and adaware, which both catch different spyware/adware that the other doesnt.

Too many just leads to a major slowdown on your computer, and in the end, just more stress for the CPU.

 

jesus what are you so afraid of?

 

i'm the visceral opposite of you - i have Vista's default firewall up (alongside my router's firewall), windows defender and zero anti-virus programs. i toyed with the idea of installing AOL's Active Virus Shield (a free full version of Kaspersky), but that seems increasingly unlikely; in my 10+ years using computers, i can count the amount of times real-time scanning has flagged a virus in one hand.