Norton expired, after posting in this forum, I asked and the general consensus was it's a piece of junk. Many recommended Avast. I downloaded avast. Today I got flat and realized I hadn't restarted my computer in quite a while. Closed everything out and when it restarted it just locked up, no curser, wouldn't even go to sleep when I closed the lid on my laptop. No real way to power down a laptop, so I took it to the computer shop. He ran his check and said I had 133 known viruses. I told him about Norton, he agreed with the posters on this board, but also said avast is about worthless. He installed malware and spybot.
did something change when we post messages ? looks different... , if you can't power down a laptop remember to pull the battery, then hold the power button down for ten seconds, reinstall Battery and start up. good to see you had this resolved, all the best
All anti-virus are pretty useless. There is no substitute for being careful what you download and run from the internet or from email attachments. Also use Firefox/Chrome and know when not to click the "allow" on the yellow bar on top of your web browser. 133... well you probably have just a few nasties infecting 133 files. He is just trying to scare some oldtimer.
yes, my messages also look different, but I thought that was because he also installed firefox as my default browser because in his opinion it is a little more secure than internet explorer. Thanks for the info, I figured out where the battery is. It is very easy and requires no tools to remove.
I'm assuming you mean Malwarebytes (free version) and not malware itself, lol. This and spybot aren't realtime antivirus protection and are only useful for manual scanning after the fact. The newer norton isn't bad but can be a resource hog. Microsoft Essentials (free) is what I use and is pretty good. Antivir is an excellent free option but pissed people off when it included the ask.com toolbar, which you just have to not accept. Either case, it's generally recommended to have one option or another realtime protection.
Use microsoft essentials as the real time anti virus and run malwarebytes once a week just to make sure you have no viruses.
yes that sounds reasonable. I googled the question and there is an active discussion on this. According to microsoft, they don't reccommend it. some say there are two versions of MB, one active and one manual. I know nothing, just glad I had this problem when I was flat.
The realtime version of malwarebytes is the premium paid subscription. It's definitely not recommended to have multiple realtime antivirus programs going, as it can be a real drain on the system and cause conflicts. You'll be fine with microsoft security essentials for realtime, and malwarebytes and spybot for interval scanning or if the computer starts acting strange and chippy. A security essentials scan should also be run during this case. I don't run manual scans very often since I haven't had a virus for >5 years. I use firefox with the noscript extension for browsing, and that minimizes a lot of risks that aren't as easily prevented using internet explorer.