3 Steps - Keep your computer Crap Free
Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2008 1:48 am
Request for Sticky Topic
3 Steps – Keep your computer Crap Free
1. AVG Anti-Virus
2. Ad-aware
3. Spybot S&D
There are three programs I abide by that is AVG Anti-Virus, Ad-aware, and Spybot. AVG is free, and most of all it works. The worst antivirus I have found is Bit Defender, here’s why: It doesn’t run in safe mode. It is very critical that your anti-virus runs in Safe Mode, anytime you get infected, 99% of the time you’re going to have to run a scan in Safe Mode, hell sometimes you got to yank the hard drive, but leave that to the professionals. The 2nd to worst Anti-Virus is McAfee, it’s too unorganized, I hate programs that tell you oh you have a problem, click here to fix. I want to know what’s wrong. I can understand the idea behind McAfee and their over-simplification, sell to the stupid. Norton Anti-Virus, only problem with them is all the errors that can arise that and the fact AVG does all the same ***** for free, who the hell cares about a firewall, Windows already has one, and don’t let some chucklehead tell you it don’t work, because it does, leave it alone and leave it enabled. Figure the following, if you have DSL, you’re behind a firewall most likely, then Windows has a firewall. That means you’re behind two firewalls, and figure this who is really interested in the porn that you have stored in you’re my documents. No one is going to hack a home PC. You don’t need Zone Alarm or any of that crap.
The next thing Ad-aware, works wonders, but it is nothing without it’s enemy partner Spybot, Lavasoft actually sued the guys at Spybot over some crap, but the funny thing is how well they work together. I find that Ad-aware does what it says it gets rid of the adware, Spybot I have found to be more effective on the “nasties” and Trojans. I usually run Ad-aware first. Be sure to select Full System Scan, not smart scan, not anything else. After you scan and remove one bag of trash, run spybot, if you still have problems after that, you need a technician to look at your computer, if they can’t fix it there’s one of two possibities, 1. your technician sucks, 2. you need to reload windows. I have tried and used Anti-Rootkit software both from grisoft and F-secure, and I’ve yet to find a rootkit.
Other things. You don’t need to run Disk Defragmenter, I don’t care what they say, look at it like this. Your hard disk might be an 80 GB, well each sector is usually 4 KB in size, by putting the blocks back together really don’t do a whole lot, when there is 100 million of them. All you’re doing is putting your hardware under additional stress. Computer running slow, edit the start-up, you can do that by clicking Start>Run and type msconfig. Be ware of what you take out, generally the average user doesn’t need to modify any Services. If you have Windows Vista you have it a little easier as you have descriptions on everything.
Where can I find all this?
Go to download.com, type in the keyword, it’s easy to find.
3 Steps – Keep your computer Crap Free
1. AVG Anti-Virus
2. Ad-aware
3. Spybot S&D
There are three programs I abide by that is AVG Anti-Virus, Ad-aware, and Spybot. AVG is free, and most of all it works. The worst antivirus I have found is Bit Defender, here’s why: It doesn’t run in safe mode. It is very critical that your anti-virus runs in Safe Mode, anytime you get infected, 99% of the time you’re going to have to run a scan in Safe Mode, hell sometimes you got to yank the hard drive, but leave that to the professionals. The 2nd to worst Anti-Virus is McAfee, it’s too unorganized, I hate programs that tell you oh you have a problem, click here to fix. I want to know what’s wrong. I can understand the idea behind McAfee and their over-simplification, sell to the stupid. Norton Anti-Virus, only problem with them is all the errors that can arise that and the fact AVG does all the same ***** for free, who the hell cares about a firewall, Windows already has one, and don’t let some chucklehead tell you it don’t work, because it does, leave it alone and leave it enabled. Figure the following, if you have DSL, you’re behind a firewall most likely, then Windows has a firewall. That means you’re behind two firewalls, and figure this who is really interested in the porn that you have stored in you’re my documents. No one is going to hack a home PC. You don’t need Zone Alarm or any of that crap.
The next thing Ad-aware, works wonders, but it is nothing without it’s enemy partner Spybot, Lavasoft actually sued the guys at Spybot over some crap, but the funny thing is how well they work together. I find that Ad-aware does what it says it gets rid of the adware, Spybot I have found to be more effective on the “nasties” and Trojans. I usually run Ad-aware first. Be sure to select Full System Scan, not smart scan, not anything else. After you scan and remove one bag of trash, run spybot, if you still have problems after that, you need a technician to look at your computer, if they can’t fix it there’s one of two possibities, 1. your technician sucks, 2. you need to reload windows. I have tried and used Anti-Rootkit software both from grisoft and F-secure, and I’ve yet to find a rootkit.
Other things. You don’t need to run Disk Defragmenter, I don’t care what they say, look at it like this. Your hard disk might be an 80 GB, well each sector is usually 4 KB in size, by putting the blocks back together really don’t do a whole lot, when there is 100 million of them. All you’re doing is putting your hardware under additional stress. Computer running slow, edit the start-up, you can do that by clicking Start>Run and type msconfig. Be ware of what you take out, generally the average user doesn’t need to modify any Services. If you have Windows Vista you have it a little easier as you have descriptions on everything.
Where can I find all this?
Go to download.com, type in the keyword, it’s easy to find.