… is the first of its kind I have found which doesn’t “autopsy” one’s system and then tell you - you have to buy their software.
It has worked well for me thus far.
Also, I am reading (here) that AVG is getting “clunkier”. My 2 year sub expires next Feb., and I am current with 9.0.
Not noticing anything “clunky” though. Can someone please tell me what I need to look for to indicate deficiencies in the program?
Thanks
Q
Ccleaner by Piriform is considered on the best free reg cleaners. It doesn’t catch every last broken entry but it is extremely safe to use as long as you only delete what it recommends.
I don’t know anything about Eusing.\
What sorts of deficiencies did you have in mind?
I don’t know dzero.
Maybe it doesn’t “catch” everything it should, or is slow to respond? Admittedly, I don’t have the “super-duper” version (the $50.00 one:)). I’d just like to know that if I need to switch - why and to which service?
AVG has worked okay for me so far, but then I also needed to clean my registry and I am also not as savvy as I should be rearding OS’s.
Which is why yours and so many others’ opinions matter so much to me! 
Thanks for the link! I’m gonna check it out right now.
Q
I can’t help you with free antivirus. I know most of the big names but haven’t used any personally (at least not recently) so I can’t give you any ideas.
EXCEPT, whatever else you install, get MSE (MS Security essentials). This is a great product but it will only catch known threats (as opposed to some software that uses heuristics plus virus signatures). It works well with other AV software from what I’ve heard and is supposed to be quite good in it’s own right.
Malwarebytes I’m sure you know about but the free version only lets you do manual scans and updates I think.
edit- from what I’ve heard, MSE has little to no impact on system performance.
That’s a sort of subjective measure, really. As far as I’m concerned, AVG hit its zenith in 2004 or so and has gotten substantially more bloated since, in terms of memory usage and CPU time. In addition, I seem to remember that later versions have a nasty habit of setting your search engine to what it wants (Yahoo, IIRC) and installing a bunch of crap in your browser that you don’t need. MSE is much cleaner and is very seamless, in my experience.
I recently used a registry cleaner. I didn’t notice any performance gain, and it wiped out my cache and history without asking me. Have any of you seen a real performance gain with one of these?
All a registry cleaner will speed up is like, populating the list of file types and other stuff that you never do and only takes 0.2 seconds anyway. If they’re not pointless, they’re a spyware scam. Anything that is more aggressive than “cleaning” those pointless lists might hose your system.
They usually also pull out references to files that no longer exist.
So, me being a guy with very little mind and/or money to spend, where would you direct me in finding the most economical way to stay online safely?
You can exclude the ISP. A family member is providing THAT.
Thanks
Quasi
Start using firefox if you don’t already and get the following.
Those are the minimum you should have. Noscript will be a bit of a pain until you have permitted javascript on your most visited sites. After that, it will only be an occasional annoyance, but one that is well, well worth the minor inconvenience.
Personal Firewall from Comodo gives you both a Firewall and an Antivirus, both free.
The app learns about incoming and outgoing connections (you tell it what to trust) so it is a little irritating at first while it questions everything but will soon settle down and run happily without bothering you.
I do not use the bundles “proactive security” which checks pages you visit in your browser as I use Firefox & the add-ons dzero suggests.
It seems to be pretty good on my laptop, without taking up too much of the resources. I set it to scan when I am not at my machine.
K-Meleon is a much better choice than Firefox. It’s based on Mozilla like Firefox is, but you can simply toggle javascript, and Flash on and off at will. I keep flash off and turn it on when I like. I can disable or enable javascript with the toggle of a button.
You should have Spybot, Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware, and an antivirus. AVG Free, Avast, or MS Security Essentials
Keep Windows Firewall and the firewall that came with your router.
These will keep you safe.
The main difference between pay and free versions of programs is the free ones don’t usually update themselves. This seems to be the cause of a lot of grief. You need to update your anti-malware and anti-spyware every day.
Does this Mozilla variant accept all of the thousands of firefox plugins? Because if not, it’s hardly worth it for a little convenience.
Also, I assume that with any kind of toggle, it turns scripting on or off for all javascript on the page. That’s not a good idea. As you all know, there are many ways for malware to show up on a site - such as ads - and adblocking software is far from perfect. There are absolutely NO sites for which I turn on scripting globally unless it is absolutely necessary for the functionality I need - or I’m too lazy to figure out which third party’s script the site is relying upon.
Anyway, if you really like that feature, there are FF plugins that do the same thing now. You don’t need to migrate to a whole other browser to get extra cup holders.
“Registry Cleaners” are at best useless, and more commonly responsible for causing problems. The Windows registry hive is very efficient, and very complicated. No registry cleaner has ever been proven to speed up any aspect of computer use at all, so why bother with the potential danger?
The only useful registry utilities are specifically targeted to certain problems, such as removing traces of a failed install or uninstall (which again, is not necessary). Even those are just as easy to manually (and safely) remove.
Well, you need to invest a little ‘mind’ – in things NOT to do.
Generally, just use a bit of your mind to be cynical & suspicious toward incoming email – that will go a long way toward keeping you safe.
I’m down-widdit!
Thanks
Q
Very, very good advice and true statements. I have been a Windows developer for 20 years and never have used or seen a need for these utilities.
This.
I’ve worked in technical support for a long time, and these things can cause a lot of problems. Worse, these problems can occur far after using the tool in very unpredictable, maddening ways. We had one in particular that would just replace the kernel executable in Windows XP with their own thing, causing pretty far-reaching implications that users just didn’t understand (like kernel mode drivers not working). There were many times that we couldn’t make heads or tails of what the utility had done, or they’d used multiple registry cleaners to speed things up a lot or whatever, and we just had to tell them to reinstall Windows. Sad, but messing with the registry is a dangerous game.
Having some crappy utility mess around in my registry to ‘speed things up’ thrills me about as much as having a backalley doctor poke around my insides to optimize them.
ClearCloud DNS is a service that has a good potential of reducing infections.
I’ve used Eusing Reg Cleaner for a long time, about once a month, and it works just fine. It automatically creates a Restore Point before doing the cleaning so if anything goes wrong, you can go back.
It may not speed up a computer noticeably, but it reduces the grossly bloated Registry as time goes by. Why MS does not deal with this is beyond me.