My McAfee comes free bundled with BT Yahoo. Never had a problem.

klal: you end-user you! You didn't mention you'd installed Norton! Never mind, it's all working and that's what matters.

Windows Security Essentials has a (surprisingly) good reputation, and I'd recommend sticking with it.

I would use the free version of Malwarebytes to scan occasionally - it's a pretty good product.

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

Personally, I've canned Norton (when the sub became due) on two machines and switched to AVG. Sadly, the latest version of AVG (2011) seems to have acquired some of the attributes of Norton (basically, getting in the way) according to some reports, although it hasn't yet offended me.

I'm using AVG Internet Security on Windows XP Pro.

I've got a little advisory screen for it which says:

Security components and status overview

Anti-Virus - Active
Anti-Spyware - Active
Anti-Spam - Active
Firewall - Active
LinkScanner - Active
Resident Shield - Active
E-Mail Scanner - Active
Update Manager - Active
License - Active
Online Shield - Active
Anti-Rootkit - Active
System Tools - Active
PC Analyzer - Active
Identity Protection - Active

So basically, just at one glance I can see everything is actually working and (theoretically) how well protected I am.

Thinks...I am probably being conned by this stuff just like millions of other Internet users. However, it looks good, is easy to manage and seems to work quite well and fast too.

Whenever I use Google this AVG stuff tells me which are the safe sites and which are Verisign registered sites on all of the Google answers. So that's nice.

Now I happen to know that any Anti-Virus system is not going to be 100% successful. However, it is best to have one and also one that you are happy to use. This seems to fit the bill for my simple mind.

The AVG version is 10.0.1191 and is '2011'

Here's a link to a page which tells you what all the above stuff means:

http://www.softwarediscountcodes.com/avg-antivirus2011.html#UK

MM, I stand guilty! Guess I wasn't thinking straight and in my mind, saw McAfee as the culprit while the evidence pointed elsewhere.

Rather than rely on Windows Firewall, I've now stuck in Comodo. All working well.

Thanks guys for your patient help.

Sorry..wrong thread!

In my opinion Prevx is the best solution, its not free though.

NOW I know I'm getting old! My eight-year old daughter moans about her Club Penguin site loading real slow. She figured out it's the Comodo Firewall I installed yesterday. She practically commands me to turn it off and use something else. I obeyed. Went back to Windows Firewall and her sites now load lightning fast. One happy kid but one depressed dad! :-)

Ah well - such is life. Look on the bright side. Give her another year and she'll sort all your IT problems for you.

I use the free Zzone Alarm firewall and it works fine for my and doesn't seem to slow things down.

I have used the free Zone Alarm firewall for years with no problems.

I've been having problems on my Dell 1750 laptop for a while. Everything but internet connection runs fine, but when I open Firefox to my homepage (MoneyAm Watch) on initial bootup it usually take an eternity to log in and then another long period in displaying the watch screen, with the Java indicator going round & round. I have been able to get round this by loading another "simpler" page and then switching back to MoneyAm. In Thunderbird it hangs up on "looking up" my email website and will only work correctly after I've done the above.

It looks as if the problem is connected to the Dell Wlan 1397 wireless card and/or the tray utility that works with it. If I right click the tray icon of the utility to open it I get a message "Internal configuration is inconsistent. Please restart the machine to resolve the problem". Another message I get at boot-up some times is "Boot Configuration Editor has stopped working".
There are 2 files running which may or may not be involved: BCMWLTRY.exe & WLTRYSVC.exe. The first exe is apparently the wireless network card controller, but I'm not sure what the other one relates to. Could it be the tray utility? If so is there any problem with getting rid of this file and seeing if the problem is cured?

Thanks

You could just try killing the processes and the worst that should happen is that you might have to reboot. Have a look ar

Windows key
Run
msconfig
startup tab

and see what things your machine is asking to run at startup.

Hello Haystack.

Been in to system startup & disabled the Dell Utility. I've left the card controller running as I imagine it will probably kill the wireless connection.

Everything went well on a reboot, so bodes well, but will take a couple of days to find out if it's a consistent "fix". Will come back after the weekend with an answer.

I had got to the point where I was thinking that I would need to re-install win7 as the inbuilt repair/fault fixing was of no benefit. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, I really appreciate it.

You dont really need a firewall on your PC if your router has a firewall and if its switched on.

Don't fall for the Flash Drive Scam

Some Chinese 'hackers' are selling flash drives with less memory than they advertise. eBay traders have apparently sold thousands of 'hacked' flash drives from China. The problem is that the hackers change a log file that makes the flash drive think it has more memory than it does. When you receive the drive, if you right click and go to properties it will display a larger amount of memory than it really has- so when you put data on it that exceeds it's actual memory, old data will be deleted. This problem is nearly impossibly for the average person to detect because the flash drive looks and works normally- until it's memory is filled.

The drives seen were supposedly 250Gb and cost just 25.00.

"If it looks too good to be true, it probably is," definitely applies in this case.

Re my earlier post - 9349

It;s improved a bit, bit I've still had one occasion when I had a warning about the "boot configuration data" has had been the case before deleting the Dell Utility.

Initial boot is a bit faster than it had been, as is the case with Firefox and Thunderbird. I still get a (shorter) delay in getting in to my homepage on MoneyAm etc.

Hmmm? An 'i5 computer processor' or an 'i7 computer processor'?

What's the difference?

Now there's a question.

Here's an answer and a great explanation on why the i7 is better than the i5

:-) :-)

One of my external hard drives did a wobbly yesterday - so it's WPB time before it ends in tears.

I like ExecLine's Computer Doctors choice of gear. They are suggesting this at a price very similar to the one linked at Amazon. I did this link as it showed some highly positive reviews. And I could not get the CD link to work!

TP

TP,

Given your dependence on reliable large storage devices, is it worth considering RAID devices such as this?

MM

Yes, MM.

I thought about RAID when I woke up this morning. I need to do a bit of reading.

At 193 I assume it comes with a 1Tb drive and I'd need to buy a second one like the Seagate at 47. My limited understanding of RAID is that then give me 1tb of protected data. Snag is that I already need more space so I'd need to get something larger.

Another factor to consider is that I always back up my photos to portable drives as I have to be covered against any damage (water, fire, theft) to my studio and these portables live in my apartment.

So I'm not like an operation that cannot survive a disk crash (yes I lose a day's work but that's all) as my photos are always in two places. So I could live with an array of those 1tg Samsungs as long as they are always backed up.

But I am happy to go down the RAID route - just need some more research I guess.

TP