Hardcore Protection?

[Hollow]

Avast is pretty sweet actually, all it does is talk to me when the database is updated...usually once a day or less. Mcafee I'm going to get rid of, it's a pain in the arse to be honest.

[whiffen]

what makes you think you are infected?

Nothing like that. I've just decided that I need to get protection after 2 years of having next to none.


PS: Anyone got some pro-tips on defraggers? Is the one integrated in to Windows good enough? I'm pretty sure I really need to defrag my drive too.

Diskeeper is tops. But thats one you must pay for.

http://www.diskeeper.com/

The makers of CCleaner have this nifty little program called defraggler though which you can find here for free.

http://www.piriform.com/defraggler/download

Diskeeper auto defrags as you use the computer, its a background running process so its not one of those slowing scans you have to run manually every now and then. It prevents your HDD from becoming fragmented in the first place, so I would recommend it. Not to mention its blazing fast.

As for whats better, they all pretty much do the same thing. The differences would be the methods and speeds I suppose but all of them are set out to do the same job.

[tron00]

I use AVG, CCleaner and Regcure.

And I don't browse dodgy sites.

LOL.. wise words of advice, and I loved the way you put it. I went to a Gartner IT convention once and they talked about one year, like 2005 or something awhile back, where there were 1200 new viruses (I hate virii), and like 20 pieces of spyware. They showed how the next year those numbers switched. The virus kiddies realized they could get paid creating Adware/Identity Theft software. Most virus programs are fine, whatever. I like MalwareBytes for spyware.

[Terr]

I've got a no-longer-being-updated McAffee VirusScan on my main computer...

But 95% of it is "basic hygeine". Don't run as administrator. Don't run that file if you can't trust it, etc.

For defrags, take a look at JKDefrag (latest release it's had a rename.) It's free, it uses the underlying windows system calls for defragmenting, you can run it as a screensaver, etc.