Best utility packages available?

danceMB

danceMB

danceMB

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I have been thinking that with all the utility programs going around, both paid-for and free, its time to know what would make a computer run the fastest and most secure using a select number of programs.

So I put it to everyone, what do you use to keep your computer fast, bug free & trouble free?
 
Don't bother with any of the bloated (and expensive) all-in-one security suites, just get a freeware firewall like Jetico or Ashampoo and a freeware AV like Avast or Antivir (for optimal performance don't allow realtime scanning, just manually scan downloads).

Use Opera or Firefox and some kind of adblock mod and there is a very good good chance you will remain free of spyware. Memory resident spyware scanners are notorious resource hogs, so I'd steer clear. Again, manually scan occassionally if it makes you feel better.

Registry cleaners are pretty much worthless. At most you are going to strip out maybe 30kb of "junk" and there is a real risk of causing damage. Is it worth it?

So called memory optimisers are a waste of space too. All they do is ship stuff out to the swapfile. Avoid.

For the record I use Ashampoo firewall, NOD32 (manual scans only), Opera, Winpatrol (checks for items adding themselves to startup) and Perfectdisk (IMO the best defragmenter). I've never had a virus or malware outbreak in 8 years of computing.
 
At the moment I personally use:

Kaspersky Anti-Virus
Perfectdisk 7
AVG (Free edition)
Crap Cleaner
Tune-up utilities
Ad Aware SE
Spybot - S&D

Just wondered if I needed to use less or more, or something different that would save me time to make my computer optimised in everyway. Used to also use System Mechanics but became a waste of space in the end
 
danceMB said:
{snip}Kaspersky Anti-Virus
AVG (Free edition){snip}
Click to expand...
Two (2) antivirus programs :eek: You should never install & run 2 antivirus programs, they clash & end result is that you somewhat don't have anything running on your system leaving it vulnerable :(
 
They seem to co-exist very well with eachother and it seems to be Kaspersky that might pick up anything that it doesnt like which isnt much as im upto date with all the programs that I use, even if it might be a bit tiresome to run them all from time to time.

Sometimes I dedicate a chunk of computing time to run all of them, one after the other.
 
I use Firefox with no extensions and NOD32, windows firewall behind a Belkin router.

With a lot of various browsing i decided to install and run Ad-aware and spybot search and destroy. After 4months of use, not one bit of spyware was found.

Common sense is all that you need.

and Diskeeper! :)
 
can I ask why people even bother with Diskeeper - what does it do that's so essential?

All I use is the usual spyware removal tools, McAfee EPO (free to the school from the council), CCleaner and TuneXP.
 
danceMB said:
They seem to co-exist very well with eachother and it seems to be Kaspersky that might pick up anything that it doesnt like which isnt much as im upto date with all the programs that I use, even if it might be a bit tiresome to run them all from time to time.

Sometimes I dedicate a chunk of computing time to run all of them, one after the other.
Click to expand...
Microsoft Antivirus Partners said:
Important: If you have antivirus software installed but want to install a new product from a different company, be sure to uninstall your current product before installing the new one. Having two different antivirus programs installed can cause conflicts (problems) on your computer.
Click to expand...
More info here :)
 
danceMB said:
They seem to co-exist very well with eachother and it seems to be Kaspersky that might pick up anything that it doesnt like which isnt much as im upto date with all the programs that I use, even if it might be a bit tiresome to run them all from time to time.

Sometimes I dedicate a chunk of computing time to run all of them, one after the other.
Click to expand...

Surely your PC is taking a large performance hit if both are scanning actively in the background?
 
It doesnt seem to take that much of a performance hit really tbh, I suppose that I could live without AVG free if I had to, not sure what it really does as Kaspersky seems to stop anything coming in, and have the other spyware programs to keep other stuff out.

Never would have though Kaspersky and AVG together would hit me too much
 
I use :

System Mechanic Pro (includes Kaspersky AV and Firewall)
Perfectdisk 8
Opera
Firefox
PowerDesk
NOD32 (on a different partition)
MailWasher
 
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