Help please

[Trazza]

Can someone please advise me on a free anti virus and firewall sites. Up till last week I had AVG 8.5 and it was fine but I got a message to upgrade to 9.0 as 8.5 was not offering further updates. I did this and from then on my pc worked like a snail. Yesterday I had had enough so I uninstalled AVG via add/remove programs and installed Virgin PC Guard. It seemed to work fine but after shutting down the pc and later starting it again I lost the antivirus part of the security. Today I have been in touch with virgin and basically after nearly 2 hours of remote assistance they have decided that they cant fix it and they will TRY to call me later if they have any ideas.

Sorry about the rant but all I want is some basic security for my pc. All we do on the pc is surf the net ie ebay ect so no banking or downloading music and films ect and no naughty sites so come on guys and gals Keep my faith in this site alive and please please advise me on what to install or if anyone knows where i can download AVG 8.5 from i would be very gratefull

[RandyL]

Hi Trazza.

 

You will find some free ones at Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help Recommended Security products

 

Just make sure you download the free versions.

[Trazza]

Has anyone else had issues with AVG?

[Trazza]

Just had a look at the above link and I think that comodo looks ok is it still recomended and my bigger concern is can I safely download it with no current anti virus in place

[Trazza]

sorry but here is another question regarding above.

 

If I install comado(it says it comes with a firewall) do I still need to install a antispy/malware programe or is the comado a complete security package?

[starfox]

usually i always download extra programs to deal with malware and spyware as well as anti virus programs. the ones i use are spybot search and distroy and malwarebytes they are free. located at

 

Download Spybot - Search and Destroy - Freeware Software - Tucows

Malwarebytes.org

 

just for a note i have had tons of issues with AVG i find it doesnt do its job as well as it did before im currently searching for a better one i havernt tried comodo.

[Trazza]

well I got the name comado from the link above off Randy. the people who help run this site apparently recommend it.

[RandyL]

1. I've known plenty of people that had issues with AVG Free. From my personal experiences it failed to detect a lot of malware and even what it did find it often could not remove it.

 

2. Comodo firewall does just fine from what I hear. I never tried the antivirus.

 

3. I have used Avira AntiVir and Avast and found them both to be quite good.

 

4. Yes you can safely download it Trazza. Please download and install protection before doing anything else.

 

5. As starfox noted Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free is a good malware scanner. I've used Spybot a lot but prefer to use SUPERAntiSpyware Free over Spybot as it seems to detect much more.

 

6. For some free basic real time protection against malware which you can run along side of an antivirus I suggest Spyware Blaster and Windows Defender. I use both.

[cpw]

Hi Trazza,

AVG seem to have rolled out v9.0 before it's been properly debugged and a lot of people (including me) have been complaining long and loud about it, trying all the "fixes" their tech people have sent out, with very little success. If you check out the FreeAVG forum, you'll find a link to an uninstall tool which seems to do a more thorough job of removal than the add/remove programs facility. If you did want to go back to v8.5 there's a link to that on the forum too. You'd probably be better off following RandyL's advice about alternatives though, because AVG claim they won't be supporting v8.5 from December.

[Trazza]

Hi all I did take Randy's advise and installed another anti virus ect, I installed comodo which says it's a anti virus and a firewall but as I dont really understand much about pc's it is confusing me.

 

When I switch the pc on I keep getting a box appearing which wants me to connect to a network and asking whether or not I trust the other pc's in this network. As far as I know I did'nt think I was part of a network or am I misunderstanding things. The IP address is showing as 192.168.0.(dont really know if I should put the other numbers down cos I may be telling everybody how to get into my pc i'm paronoid I think).

 

Anyway any more advice would be greatly appreciated even if it's download an easier security suite to understand (you would have to tell me which though cos it's a minefield out there and I could very easily get my legs blown off)

[maynardvdm]

I can move this to the Malware removal section and let our malware expert look at your pc if you wish.

 

Let me know.

[Tootech]

Hi,

 

I can move this to the Malware removal section and let our malware expert look at your pc if you wish

 

Comodo needs some training - thats what happens, it asks for loads of info the first couple of times you run it. Thats the downside of free software sometimes, you need to have some input to set up the programs.

 

When I install programs like Comodo I expect it will flag up a good few programs until it is happy. Once it has a baseline to work from any new requests for Internet access would need to be checked before allowing.

 

If you don't understand it, there's no point in using it, you could easily say yes and allow a spyware program Internet access.

 

You can install just the Comodo Firewall - its an option during installation. If you didn't use that option, have installed the full package and also have installed another antivirus program, it may cause problems - maybe we should go back a step on this one???

 

Did you installl the full Comodo package, and what antivirus program have you installed?

 

Edit: For ease of use and user friendliness you could try Eset Smart Security - its a commercial package, well worth its money in my opinion, and you can use it as a trial for 30 days.

[kevh]

Was using avg 9.0 which was better and faster than 8.5 but now using ms security essentials on win7 and am very impressed.

 

Cheers Kev :cool:

[Trazza]

Hi all thank you very much for your replies and the time taken to do them.

I think I was probably worrying for nothing as when I went to comodo's help page it explained that the "network" I was worrying about was actually the network via my router so I have told it to allow the connection.

It's not that I do any banking or entering personal numbers via the internet, just the usual e-bay and web surfing so I dont think I need super duper security, just normal protection. Other than that it seems fine but I am hoping AVG will soon sort itself out then I can go back to that as I understood it much better and then I will reinstall zonealarm also.

Once again thanks for your time.

[muppet rebecca]

I use currently pc tools av and firewall combination which works really well. Anti viruses do there job don't get me wrong but it's always a good idea to have a firewall on your computer or something like spyware blaster is good. I do agree with the malwarebyte's and super anti-spyware combination with regards to those kind of infections they are the best combination. Another thing to remember is two programs never scan the computer the same way.