[Old Otter]

My wife bought a new computer for the household for Christmas. It is a Dell Inspiron 531 running Windows Vista Basic. I use Firefox as my default internet browser.

I have read through several of the old threads. I have read the General Security Information - How to tighten Security Settings and Warnings post, I have read and gone to many of the sites on the Security Help Tools post and have tried to educate myself from this website.

So now here comes more information and the inevitable stupid questions:

In the past when I was running Windows XP I was using Norton Anti virus and Symantec Internet security firewall. These programs seemed to be huge resource hogs and became unstable. I had to disable them in order to check my email or open some websites or CCapp.exe and others would lock up with 100 percent resource use. I would like to stay away from these if I could.

I have downloaded Spyware Blaster, AdAware, Sbybot S&D, AVG anti-virus and Comodo firewall. As soon as I figure out how to turn off the Windows firewall and the Trend Micro PC-cillin internet security that came pre-loaded on my computer, I plan on installing the above mentioned software.

Does anyone see any conflict with installing all of these programs on my computer? Should I notice a major change in my computer's performance from these programs? If anyone has any comments, feedback or advice I would greatly appreciate it. Please keep it simple, I am a special kind of computer stupid.

Thank you,
Otter

[crystal clear]

I' a real novice but I've been told norton security didn't used to be good but now it is and if your online with at&t they give you a version of it free. search for at&t free norton security.

[crystal clear]

when you use spybot search and destroy...how do you know what to allow to be destroyed when you don't know what it is?

[lazyloon]

There shouldn't be any conflict with the avg AND Comodo.....Its alright to have those SPyware programs however I wouldn't have all running at the same time....good to have them in case one doesn't pick up something that the other program might.....I found Nortons was ALWAYS a resource pig and you should see a improvement on speed..As for Spybot .....If you are unsure what to allow then dont...most items picked up by Spybot should be removed

[stantley]

Originally Posted by Old Otter

I have downloaded Spyware Blaster, AdAware, Sbybot S&D, AVG anti-virus and Comodo firewall. As soon as I figure out how to turn off the Windows firewall and the Trend Micro PC-cillin internet security that came pre-loaded on my computer, I plan on installing the above mentioned software.

If you're not going to use Trend Micro PC-cillin, instead of turning it off I would completely uninstall it. When you uninstall that and install Comodo and AVG anti-virus, it's a good idea to turn off you're internet connection. Then when you have Comodo and AVG up and running, connect to the internet and make sure they both have the latest updates.

Also the free versions of SpywareBlaster, AdAware and Spybot must be updated manually, so periodically check for updates.

You did an excellent job researching the software, everything you chose was a good decision.

[calvin-c]

I'm not familiar with Comodo firewall, but the other's I've used (Norton originally, now the firewall in AVG's Internet Security package) replace the Windows firewall, i.e. they turn it off automatically when they're installed. Hopefully Comodo would do the same. Of course this was under XP, too. (Doing it this way let the new firewall 'substitute' for the Windows firewall in the Windows Security Center.)

[Old Otter]

Thank you all for your input. Thank you Stantley for your advice and the feed back on my software choices. Now let's see if I can figure out how to get all this stuff installed and running correctly. Thanks again everyone.

Otter