Too Much of a Good Thing- Anti-Malware

Think that protecting yourself with 9 different types of the latest anti-malware is a good idea? Think again. More often then not, when I am called to a residence to fix an issue regarding computer speed, the issue is not from any form of malware at all. Ironically, the things that you put on your computer to protect yourself from malware (McAfee, Norton, etc.) and keep things running smoothly can cause more issues then the malware would have! Having many different types of anti-malware is not the ideal solution for keeping your computer safe; choosing 2 (3 max) different types of anti-malware solutions is a much more practical and smooth way of doing things.

The main issue stems from the fact that a lot of programs you purchase at stores are designed for relatively new computers…Norton 2010 may not be the best solution for your Windows 98 computer for example. When the software is designed they assume certain minimum benchmarks for your computer to be at for running the software properly, and while you may very well meet those minimum requirements it will eat up your system resources which makes everything run slow. This problem is magnified when you run multiple forms of anti-malware with actively running components (McAfee, and Norton for example) at the same time. It gets even worse if they are configured improperly, and run their scheduled scans at the same time. In many cases, anti-malware programs do not play nice together, and will actually cause conflicts that make certain programs/applications stop working…most notably Internet Explorer and Outlook. At most, you should have one actively running anti-malware program, which is a program that starts up when your computer starts up and is always on actively protecting you from any malware you may encounter.

I highly reccomend having one actively running anti-malware program, and one that you can choose to run manually as a backup. Here are some reccomendations for your anti-malware needs, and a list of ones you should avoid with a slower computer, try to aim for having one from each list! My personal choices are AVG and Malwarebytes.

Popular Anti-malware Programs with active running components-
AVG (Low computer resource usage, very up-to-date)
Trend Micro (Relatively low computer resource usage)
Norton (Avoid with a slower computer)
McAfee (Avoid with a slower computer, free with Comcast!)

Manually run anti-malware programs-
Malwarebytes (Free! You can pay for this one to have an active scan)
Spybot (Free! Comes with components that block harmful websites and system settings changes)

Anti-Malware Programs to Avoid-
AOL’s Internet Security (This is a highly intrusive resource hog that only causes problems, avoid using at all costs!)
CA Security Suite (This is peddled by people that work at Best Buy and Comp USA. Avoid it, expensive, intrusive, and causes problems if installed/uninstalled improperly.)
Zone Alarm (No. I don’t even know if this is used anymore, but this will prevent you from even using the internet in certain cases. It is worse then any virus I have encountered.)

If you need help getting any of these set up (or to fix the fact that you have 12 installed on your computer right now), give us a call at 281-0009 and we will be happy to help you out .