[325isbimmer]

I just received my new Dell desktop, and I must say I very pleased with it. Never had a computer this nice. (coming from a guy that had a 7 year old HP POS).

AMD 64 Athlon X2 4200 Mhz, 2GB DDR2 533 Mhz RAM, 250 GB, 256 MB Nvidia GeForce 7300 LE runnning on XP SP2 (media centre) on a 20" widescreen. :up: I love it. (don't mean to brag, im just excited and maybe you guys can tell me more about the comp as i'm no expert)

NOW, to my question. I want to keep this comp running as fast as it does now and it came with a 3 month trial of Norton internet security, so far it seems to work good, but I use to hear bad things about Norton and I've always run AVG. As far as other programs I have ewido anti spyware(AVG anti-spyware 7.5), Spybot S&D, Ad-Aware SE, CCleaner and I'm gonna install spyware blaster. also thinking of running prevx.

can you guys make any recommendations as to whether i should bother with all these or maybe I should have more or different programs. I'm open to any suggestions. I just like to keep my comp clean and running fast as I use it mostly to surf the net, music and more importantly two engineering programs that require lots of mem and speed. (solid works 2007, Autodesk Inventor 10)

Also I had found links before to tweeking some of the above programs to work their best but i can't seem to find that information anymore. any help here also greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions

Andre

 

[daz1]

i have a dell,norton is not popular as is bundled with so much junk stuff,i would stay with whast you know and had like the avg,adaware etcetc not sure about tweaking those particular programmes,i love tweeks but have never heard of tweeks for them,as for ccleaner i would remove the tick from prefetch cleaning as this is a disputed myth

 

[redoak]

Be very careful if you decide to remove Norton, which probably is a good idea. Below is the link to S/N instructions for removalof their various programs. Beware that some folks have found this to be falable. I would establish a System Restore Point before proceeding. Better yet an entire sytem backup.

An aside- Dell is known to come 'bloated' with unnecessary programs. I would do a search here at TSG and at Google for info on removing the 'bloat.'

{redoak}

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039?

 

[325isbimmer]

I've just recently noticed that norton has tunred off the windows firewall and replaced it with its own firewall. Spybot picked up that the notification for this has also been turned off by norton. On my laptop I use to have problems with windows firewall blocking ports for programs such as Utorrent and Lime Wire. I haven't had such problems yet. Is this because the Norton Firewall is More "relaxed". What other Firewalls would you guys recommend.

Thanks again

Andre

 

[redoak]

More bad news re Norton!

I can recommend ZoneAlarm free firewall. It has been mentioned favorably here at TSG many times. There are others, too, of course, but I have had no reason to experiment.

{redoak}

 

[325isbimmer]

I have recently followed link to removing Norton and it seemed to work as advertised. I have AVG 7.5 free right now but what do I do when the free trial runs out? Maybe go to Avast? or somehow "find" an AVG subscription key?

I didn't have much luck finding information on how to remove the extra programs that come preloaded on Dell's.

 

[redoak]

Fiest, do you have a firewall in place??? My recommendation of ZoneAlarm free version is a good one, much better that the Ws. It will deactivate Ws' firewall automatically when installed. You only want one fw running. Likewise with an anti-virus program.

Here is where you can obtain the free version of AVG anti-virus: http://www.download.com/AVG-Anti-Virus-Free-Edition/3000-2239_4-10320142.html

Check the two links below for removing Dell 'bloat.'

{redoak}

http://tech.yahoo.com/bp;_ylt=AnPVEp6Npm8Si_kB6eOBRizxLJA5?blogname=null&blogpost=77

http://www.yorkspace.com/2006/04/38