Computer Protection

I was looking at this guide and was wondering if i should download all the programs he has listed... or are there certain ones?
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3. The next thing to take care of is loading up programs that you do want on your machine. I know, I know... just a while ago I had you uninstall all those programs, but there are good ones out there that will help your computer to run smoother and add some extra functionality as well. In the 11+ months since I first posted this guide I have discovered a WONDERFUL guide to freeware programs of all kinds. This site has got it all: The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities. Check it out. Seriously. That being said, I'm still going to link to several of my personal favorites and absolute essentials (a few of which have changed as of this update). With no further ado...

Spybot - Search & Destroy
Ad-Aware SE

Working in awesome tandem, these two can virtually guarantee you a spyware-free, squeaky-clean computing experience. These two programs are routinely updated to identify the latest threats to your computer's efficiency. Once a week I fire them up, have them check for and install their own updates and let them run. Anyone who truly cares for their computer owes them this common, but vital, courtesy.

AVG Antivirus

Someone in this thread mentioned this program. Good call. After using this for a couple months, I can safely say that I much prefer this to my previous recommendation (avast! Anti-virus). Mostly this is because of the friendlier interface, but also AVG seems to be slightly less demanding on resources which is always a plus.

Kerio Personal Firewall

Someone mentioned this guy in the thread as well, and I heartily approve. Not so much because its better than the Zone-alarm that I used to recommend, but because it's so much better than the current Zone-Alarm versions which are becoming worse and worse as the developers continue to make more and more features available only in the pro version. Sygate became my firewall after I became fed-up with Zone-Alarm, but it is no longer being updated. Kerio is no slouch either. To be honest, I preferred Sygate, but in light of its lack of developer support and the fact that Kerio is an extremely capable personal firewall as well keeps me from being bitter.

What's Running

This program is enormously handy. Think of it as Windows Task Manager and the Windows System Configuration Utility combined into one with a very user-friendly interface and added functionality. This one is great for making sure that your computer is only running what you want it to run.

Firefox

Still the best. In terms of security and, in my opinion, interface quality and trimness, this browser still can't be beat. That being said, Opera is also a good choice now that it's free, and it's arguably faster than Firefox as well. Of course, you should always keep IE around because there are those rare websites out there that are incompatible with anything but.

OpenOffice

Excellent software suite that contains MS Office equivalents of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. The best part is that you can save the files in MS Office standard formats so that you can create documents in OpenOffice that can still be opened on a machine using Office.

ZipGenius

I haven't found an archive that ZipGenius could not handle with speed and reliability. This program is superversatile. While programs like WinZip can handle only a few archive types, ZipGenius has a list like no other. Go here for the full list of filetypes supported by ZipGenius.

VLC Media Player

Excellent video player! Minimalistic in style, my preference, but supports many nice skins and it is positively loaded with codecs. This program can play pretty much any video thrown at it. Sure WMP and Quicktime will get most people through the day, but if you want one media player to rule them all, this is definitively it. The only reason I still use iTunes to play music (it has all the audio codecs as well) is because of its lack of a library function. Otherwise, this program is perfect.
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A lot of these are obviously going to depend if you already have programs fulfilling their roles:

The latest versions are Spybot 1.5 beta and Ad-Aware 2007. They're both decent and free. Since neither has any active real-time protection unless you opt to pay for Ad-Aware premium, there won't be many conflicts either.

A decent free anti-virus with a pretty low memory footprint. Typically, paid AV are slightly better (Kaspersky, NOD32 and BitDefender come to mind), but there probably isn't too much difference. Alternately, you can try Avira or Avast.

Never used it. The free version of Zonealarm that he mentioned is worthless since it's so limited in what you can customize though.

No clue. What's wrong with just Windows Task Manager and msconfig?

Great browser. I use it for normal surfing.

Some people swear by this (mostly because it's free probably). It's not MS Office, but it has all the functions you need in an office suite pretty much. And it's free. Install it if you don't want to pay for an office suite, otherwise not much point.

Never heard of it? WinRAR and 7zip are alternatives to winzip as well.

Decent media player that can play just about anything, including corrupt or files with missing pieces (obviously skipping over the corrupt parts). Self-contained so doesn't need separate codecs, but can't do subtitles or softsubs worth...well you get the idea. If you don't mind dealing with codecs yourself or building a player up, mplayer is better, and media player classic or zoomplayer are better than vlc player. CCCP and K-Lite are some popular "packs" that do this for you.

 

Never heard of "What's Running". I'd recommend Autoruns instead. You can read abou/download from Here.

It's non-destructive (doesn't delete anything), just allows you to toggle off services/startups you don't need. If anything gets borked, you can toggle it back on. Still needs to be used with some care.

Kerio has a good rep. I prefer AVG's protection suite (antivirus, malware, firewall). I think I paid $120 for 2 years for 3 computers. Was using Kaspersky on one machine and ran into problems with it and Logitech devices.

Firefox, definitely.

VLC Media Player is great. Open source, stable, does what it says it will do.

OpenOffice can work as an office software suite. But it does have some minor issues. If you're doing heavy database or spreadsheet work or you're doing complex word processing (multiple sections, tables, indices, graphics), MS Office would be a better choice.

Spybot and AdAware I keep around "just in case". Have not had any virus or malware issues in over 5 years, but they're good first starts if you think something got by your antivirus and firewall.

 

Oh forgot to mention. AVG anti-spyware allows you to edit startup services as well, and Windows Vista task manager gives you more options to change them as well.

Another thing to keep in mind is that openoffice, especially the database aspects of it, heavily depends on Java, which is incredibly bloated and slow on Windows.

 

Nice thanks for the help. I think ill just buy the full version of AVG, open office, firefox, VLC, and anything else....?
Also how do i change it so i dont have all the stuff i dont need to run stop

 

Should i download the spybot ans ad-aware too?

And i dont really know how to choose what programs shouldnt be running :/

 

If you don't know how to choose what programs you don't want to have running, you need to be very careful and patient. Give yourself plenty of time to learn. Or you can end up with a system that won't boot. This PC Answers Article has good basic info (a little techy). Also, look around on the Windows forum here. A couple of folks have links in their signature lines to instructions on improving startup.

The 10 Simple Ways to Speed Up XP is also a good start.

And the web is also a great resource. If you see something and you don't know if it's important or what it does, a web search will almost always give you good info. Like a Google Search of svchost.exe. You look through the results and see it's a required Windows process.

If you have any doubt about changing something - ask first. That way you won't regret it later.

 

Everything looks good, except for "Spybot - Search & Destroy". In my experience, it is a bad piece of software and most people aren't even sure if it works. In the 6 months that I had it installed on a win98 PC it never updated itself.

Personally I use Winpatrol. Nice program. Bill Gates probably uses it over Defender, I'm sure!

www.winpatrol.com

 

Everything listed here is free.

There's no point in buying the paid version of AVG. If you're going to pay for security, it might as well be one of the better ones, such as Kaspersky or NOD32 (IMHO. Obviously some people would disagree that these are better, but it's generally accepted that they are. The main advantage of AVG was that it was free, not necessarily its detection rates.)

As for Open Office, if you already have MS Office or Corel, or something, don't bother using it. If you don't have another paid office suite, and you don't feel like buying Microsoft Office, then use OpenOffice for free.

Spybot has a ton of customization options. Among those, you can set it to autoupdate and include betas and all that.

 

so should i get spybot?

 

Spybot finds stuff on mine every once in awhile. I also use Win Patrol.

 

Spybot is optional, but recommended - especially if you'll be doing a lot of file sharing, using bit torrents, chat programs, etc. It's free to use, and it doesn't run in the background, so it doesn't use resources. When you want to run Spybot, you run it. Usually only if you think you have some malware infection that your antivirus can't remove. But you can run it whenever or as often as you like.

Antivirus programs and software firewalls work in real time -they have to to protect your system. If you don't like it/use it, you can always remove it later through Windows' Add/Remove control panel.

 

"Spybot is optional, but recommended - especially if you'll be doing a lot of file sharing, using bit torrents, chat programs, etc. It's free to use, and it doesn't run in the background, so it doesn't use resources. When you want to run Spybot, you run it. Usually only if you think you have some malware infection that your antivirus can't remove. But you can run it whenever or as often as you like."

This is one of the reasons that Spybot is ineffective; when does malware (or spyware) want you to be aware of its presence on your computer? Winpatrol notifies you if a process is initialized without the user's consent; it also checks out start-up programs, has a cookie filter, etc. It has so many more options than Spybot. I'm sticking to my guns.

 

Didn't mean to dis Winpatrol. Sorry if it sounded that way.

Haven't used it, so can't comment on it. It would have been better if I'd said something like "Spybot or some other anti-malware app".

It's just good that we have the different options.

 

I don't see where you dissed Winpatrol.

I was just using your previous comment to illustrate a point.

 

Also what is NERO
I have a bunch of nero stuff on my desktop

 

That is your burning software.

 

Go for it. You might want to try Ad Aware 2007 Free if you are running XP.

Actually, i am using Windows Defender -_-''