Katana Owners Club U.K.

any reccomendations on what free antivirus is best? my dell laptop is getting a bit slow these days, im trying to figure if its my broadband, my wireless connection to it, or my pc itself. it came with macafee free for 6 months, but theyre bloody expensive to renew and im not sure that its the best option. any ideas?

First off John, go to start and then click run. Type msconfig. when thats loaded click on the startup tab and uncheck everything on it. Google update/microsoft updates/adobe updates - they all try and find updates when you turn on your computer. Anything your not sure of then google it.

As for virus software. I have only ever found Microsoft Security essentials to be any good. Never slowed me down and have never had a virus get to me. Its free !


Macfee and norton seem to slow stuff down a hell of a lot.

Pete

Avg free

I use Avast freeware. Seems to work fine for years now. You need to renew your free account once a year for free again.

same as pedda 4 years with avast doesnt intrude or conflict like norton and costs nowt!!

callyboy wrote: never had a virus get to me.

Pete

need a woman before that can happen eh !!!

Well known that Norton etc slow things down a bit on windows. Been using Avast for sometime now after previously using AVG both good,no conflicts or problems.
Have you 'cleaned-up' your hard-drive John? As in use something like CCleaner which clears out all the old crap. The other thing being to defrag the drive and registry as well.
If you've done all that and it's still slower than you think it should be try speedtest.net and see what speed you're getting.

I'll sort it out on saturday John.

Most people never check msconfig, and you should. Every time you load a piece of software or download a program you will nearly always have something added into your start up file. Most of these are checking for updates etc, so will slow down your internet etc on start up. Most of them can be unticked. I think on mine i only have the virus update one ticked. most of the non windows ones to start with if you are tidying up.

Pete

I have been using avg free for years, without any problems