You can do a fresh install on your old computer too. Its also a great way to 'reorganize' your stuff ie. delete old crap.
I've been all down the security and functionality path of PC's and other computers going back to 1974.... I run my business computer behind a whitelisting hardware firewall. It virtually never has any problems whatsoever. It only connects to businesses with pinhole firewalls and IT professionals managing the servers. It never gets upgrades and there is no need for virus software, etc.. you will never hear mention of whitelisting by the current industry that provides all the blacklisting software... the term is not in common use among computer users. I will guarantee you that it is the way to go for machines with very specific and narrow purposes like trading that have to be Windows machines, and for business that is universally true almost, it has to be Windows. Windows is fundamentally flawed regarding security and has been from the outset. It does security by passwords and levels, etc. Unix /MAC's do security by isolating programs and areas of memory, that is much simpler and far, far more effective. Windows has moved a little in that direction by randomizing where things reside in memory yet it remains fundamentally flawed for security. My surfing computer just runs the Windows firewall and I rebuild it quite often by formatting the hard drive and installing XP. I won't really have it right until I replace the surfing machine with a MAC but it's not my birthday yet....
Your right, I am having to do a clean reinstall of windows XP because the norton remover left parts of it on my hard drive that cannot be deleted and it is screwing up windows.....Norton is a mess. I will never have them or mcafee on any of my machines ever again
AntiVir does not un-install properly: it leaves a lot of crap behind. So make sure you've got an uninstaller running like Z-soft uninstaller etc. But the product is pretty fast and accurate, I'll use it again in the future. Thanks for the link. Xena
so if your machine comes with Norton installed, it's like your trapped into keeping it. It's a pain to uninstall, but if you don't uninstall you can't use a competitor's product like AntiVir because they'll conflict
Told everyone here to get ESET NOD32 for a measly $10, but only a few listened. Be glad if you're one of them.
Regarding uninstall of Avira, I'll admit to not having done many as compared to a hundred plus installations in the last year. Maybe if there is a lot of spyware and junk running on the computer it may cause conflicts. There is a special removal cleaner tool for Avira, mentioned here: http://www.pchell.com/virus/uninstallantivir.shtml Removal tools and instructions for several other AVs also.