protection for vista v64?

belnea2976 · 22 Apr 2009 at 07:08

hi all, what protection should I use for vista x64? someone said to me get the free version of avira is it any good? windows defender is currently on and uac is on should I turn these off? any other thing I should turn off or on?

Beerbaron · 22 Apr 2009 at 07:39

Ive never used avira so couldnt comment. I use AVG, windows defender and firewall and the firewall on my router. I think the general consenus on here is windows defender is rubbish so remove it but each to their own. UACs popup windows for me were just too annoying so i switched it off.

CaptainCrash · 22 Apr 2009 at 07:56

Avira's pretty good, and has a better detection rate than AVG from what I've read elsewhere, but the free version has an annoying (and huge) advertising popup which appears every time the virus definitions update (easily disabled with a bit of googling).

Don't turn UAC off.

I'm not convinced Windows Defender does anything useful, but it doesn't seem to use much in the way of resources, so it wouldn't hurt to leave it running I guess.

Anything else to do with Vista, the consensus is generally "leave it alone" unless you have a very specific reason for modifying its default behaviour.

OLDPHART · 22 Apr 2009 at 09:37

Avast anti-virus is better it's free, also I would recommend Spybot ( anti-spyware, malware) thats also free-

Avast -http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html

Spybot -http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

alex24 · 22 Apr 2009 at 10:25

NOD32 is rated very highly around these parts. I use it myself and it's very effective and importantly lightweight, which was a relief after using norton until 2004.

Craigius · 22 Apr 2009 at 10:28

alexhull24 said:
NOD32 is rated very highly around these parts. I use it myself and it's very effective and importantly lightweight, which was a relief after using norton until 2004.

Same here NOD32

bledd · 22 Apr 2009 at 10:30

don't turn off UAC, use tweakuac to silence it
don't use AVG, it's utter crap