PC Check-up *updated 3/1/08*

[GEOSoft]

Nice!

Norton, in my OPINION, is the best. (not saying a fact )

I know one thing: I'm covered with Windows Defender, Windows Firewall, Norton AntiVirus (eek: note to self: subscription expires in 40 days!), and a whole bunch more security software.

Okay, it's fine if we disagree on Norton but after working the MS newsgroups for so many years it jut becomes habit to solve peoples problems by dumping anything Norton. I seldom saw a case where it didn't do the trick either. The one I'm really disappointed about is your holding to the belief that you have a good firewall installed. A good firewall will block anything from connecting in or out unless specificly told to and that includes MS softwre that wants to call home. At best the Windows firewall should be considered as partial one way protection. There is no way that MS will ever release a firwall that will protect against Micrsoft.

[ashley]

ms would'nt do that because it would give people the wrong idea

[GEOSoft]

ms would'nt do that because it would give people the wrong idea

The very fact that the Windows Firewall exists gives people the wrong idea. They get to thinking that they are protected by a real working firewall.

[ashley]

good point

[KJohn]

The very fact that the Windows Firewall exists gives people the wrong idea. They get to thinking that they are protected by a real working firewall.

Quite true.. lol.. What would suggest is a better Firewall for vista? ZoneAlarm was good enough for XP but I'm not so enthusiastic about it now. I've installed a couple of others on Vista but all those did were block all internet access entirely.

I used to be a Norton hater too... Until a few days back my system got infected with that virus that makes those 'pagefile.pif' and 'autorun.inf' files in ur root dirs (it also runs lsass.exe and ssms.exe in the background; and infects all executables you start up)... I had Avast! installed (with the latest definitions), but it never detected even in a full system scan... I realized something was up when I saw those unfamiliar processes running in the background... The virus survived a windows reinstall coz a strain remained in my software library partition...

Installed Bitdefender, did a scan with Windows Live OneCare... all turned up negative... As a last resort (note the irony), I tried Norton Antivirus 2008... it immediately cleaned up my system thoroughly... Norton does cause a 10% slowdown and around a 80MB RAM overhead but I'm not bothered with 2GB of RAM.. and a 10% reduction in processing speed doesn't mean a thing compared to reinstalling Windows and finding it was of no use... Give Norton 2008 a chance... Symantec seems to be getting it right...

[GEOSoft]

Quite true.. lol.. What would suggest is a better Firewall for vista? ZoneAlarm was good enough for XP but I'm not so enthusiastic about it now. I've installed a couple of others on Vista but all those did were block all internet access entirely.

I have a firewalled router. In days past I would also have installed a separate software firewall but in my situation the Windows firewall is sufficient because of the hardware firewall. I'm also playing with another anti-hacking trick in case someone does manage to get past the firewalls. I installed IIS on my primary system so if they try to access my IP address they get redirected to my website which is on an external server. It needs a bit more tweaking but I'll get it right yet.

[mrbond007]

nothing beats a external router/firewall, i used zonealarm for a while but now there is Comodo firewall which is alot better. unfortuanally it's still in beta and it contains a few bugs. guess i'm stuck with zonealarm for now.

[N4rk0]

well if you could all post a path to the exe in the hdd then that would help.

and NORTOn was voted the BEST

Try to have a look on securuty/hacking sites and try too see how they speak about nortorn , the easiest av to bypass in the world....