How many antivirii's can you install?

[pZargs]

I was curious what some of you longtime members and everyone else has to say about how many antivirus,antispam/trojan,firewalls that you can install without problems. On any OS (mainly xp sp1 or 2)

And I ask this becuase I have had problems in the past with some combo's on xp sp1. So come on all lets here it!! And we all know about keeping current and Im not so much interested about all the tricks and tips just what your running?

[JP]

Greetings All:

Personally, I think installing a whole ton of crap will effect system performance more than the adware would to begin with.

If you're a home user, install 1 good AntiVirus App on your box, end of story.

I have ALWAYS felt that firewalls do NOT belong on the desktop. They belong on a hardware interface sitting on your gateway. Most DSL/Cable routers these days have built in firewalling that is more than enough for the needs of the average home user, and is more than comparable to anything you can install on the desktop anyway.

My vote? Make sure your cable/dsl router has its firewall configured. If it doesn't have one, spend the $100 or whatever to buy one that does. Set up windows update to auto download patches for you. Then, install Norton AntiVirus, and leave things the hell alone.

Obviously, the needs for computers on a Corporate or Governmental network are different, and my comments above do not apply to them. (except the part of installing only 1 antivirus app, and that firewalls should not be on desktops, well, i guess most of my comments DO apply after all).

[nihil]

In theory you can install as many as you like, so long as you don't have them running interactively.

1. A good AV program
2. A checksummer (Sentinel)
3. A script monitor (ScripTrap)
4. AdAware
5. Spybot S&D
6. A registry protector (RegistryProt)
7. Spyware Guard
8. Spyware Blaster
9. A firewall (for dial-up connections, for cable you should have a router)
10. A background process monitor (WinSonar)
11. MailControl (Verifies outgoing e-mails)

OK some of the more comprehensive protection suites contain several of these elements.

That lot run OK on my XP box (and others)

Run Trend Micro's "Housecall" and Panda's Online Scanner regularly.

[jinxy]

If you're a home user, install 1 good AntiVirus App on your box, end of story.

That was exactly what i used to think....... However, i recently upgraded a win ME box for a friend. He had been running ME for a couple of years and had had very few problems. So upgraded to xp, install AV (Norton Antivrus) Go on line, to win update.......Hit with msblaster.

So, had i put a fire wall up first, msblaster would not have been a problem. Although Nav spotted msblast it could not deal with it.

Personaly i think, a good AV, personal firewall, behind a router and some good antispyware is the minimum.


Jinxy

[Soda_Popinsky]

Most firewalls have a option to monitor programs accessing the internet.

Lets say you have a hardware firewall, but still want to be able to give program/internet privledge, w/o a software firewall. Is there any software that will just monitor for applications trying to connect to the internet, or is that so close to being a firewall that you can't have one without the other?

[PoSer]

would you be able to use a packet sniffer to see what is accessing the net somthing like snort?
that would be short of a firewall and still let you know what is going on.

[therenegade]

Wouldnt an easier solution be to just use something like Fport?It wouldnt block access fcourse

[vvirtho]

JP -
Frankly, I'm a bit surprised that you feel a desktop has no need for a firewall. But, in all honesty, it is not the first time I have heard a security expert express a similar viewpoint. I do agree that installing a lot of unneeded crap on a system will bog down performance but . . . configured correctly - a firewall and AV program can consume few system resources. I also believe the combination of firewall, AV and OS is important . . . what I mean is, I've found some AV's don't 'play well' with certain firewall programs or operating systems and the same goes for firewalls, etc. (Clear as mud - right?!)

Anywho, my vote is for: firewall, AV (with email scan), ad/mal/spyware cleaner with a reliable trojan cleaner/blocker . . . for a bare minimum.

That's my 2 cents . . . for all it's worth.

V.

[AngelicKnight]

My vote? Make sure your cable/dsl router has its firewall configured. If it doesn't have one, spend the $100 or whatever to buy one that does. Set up windows update to auto download patches for you. Then, install Norton AntiVirus, and leave things the hell alone.

For once, I must disagree with the Great One. This depends on the type of home user. If you keep sensitive information on your home computer (account info, business info, money info, etc.), then you need to be as secure as possible, and simply trusting your router firewall and Windows updates is far from being sufficient security.

If you have decent memory, a firewall/AV/spyware-adware scanner/temp&cache cleaner combo will hardly hurt system performance enough to ruin your day, as long as you don't go paranoia-crazy with it.

[Cybr1d]

A really good configuration:

Physical Firewall(router): Keeps 90% of intrusion attemps outside the network. Never had an issue with it.
Norton's Personal Firewall: If anything makes it through the router...blocks it dead on its steps. Also, does not allow anything to dial out without my permition. I.E. BargainBuddy tries to connect to the internet to download its buddies...Norton stops it from doing that.
Norton SystemWorks 2003: It comes with all you need, disk cleanup, checkup, Antivirus, Backup Util., and a bunch of other stuff.


That combo has been working very well for me...never gotten hit with any of the major viruses out there...just some silly things that come through Kazaa, which the AV picks up anyways.