Advanced System Care etc.

[Dudley]

Are programs such as Advanced System Care/Aro 2011 really worth having in addition to say AVG? I have both at present but Advanced System Care have offered me an upgrade to a trial Pro edition of ARO 2011 which has supposedly found 14,000 errors' which it says it can 'Fix' if I upgrade for $30 otherwise it won't deal with the errors.

[MarkRae]

I can guarantee that it hasn't found anything at all. All you need is AVG free (or similar e.g. Avast) and to run malwarebytes once a week or so.

[AlBags]

NO! Leave alone.

[ChuckFickens]

If it has found anything important it will only be a handful (at most) things that any decent AV program and malwarebytes would find and deal with. The other 13999 things it's found are scaremongering.

[sunny-dave]

^^^^ was about to say exactly what Mark said - but he can type faster than me :)

[sunny-dave]

as can Mr Bags and the blue footed boobies ;)

[AlBags]

These fake frightener programs fine dead links, old files and add them up to look like a nightmare. They can be left.

[Dudley]

Thanks Mark, rather what I suspected. I don't apreciate this kind of selling technique. Much appreciated.

[Dudley]

Wow! Whilst I was typing my response to Mark, quite a few more of you concurred with his answer. Thanks to you all also.

[Dudley]

p.s. Do I need to have Malwarebytes AND AVG or do they both provide the same protection please?

[AlBags]

You should keep a good AV and Malwarebytes, yes.
(Not that I'm agreeing that AVG is as good as it could be)

[MarkRae]

You need a good AV product running permanently in the background, and to run malwarebytes manually once a week or so.

[jno]

things like AVG are always running and protecting you. Malwarebytes isn't, so you switch it on once a week to run a check. They do different things.

[Dudley]

Brilliant! Thanks everyone for such a quick response and unified assessment.

[ChuckFickens]

They are much like registry cleaners... they'll find thousands of things that aren't actually causing a problem.

[tenrec]

I have just read this thread - can someone suggest where I would get the Malwarebite thing from? Which one should I choose. My Norton is due to run out in 5 days.

[tenrec]

Sorry not Norton, MacAfee

[MarkRae]

http://www.malwarebytes.org/
http://free.avg.com/g...ee-antivirus-download

[tenrec]

Thanks very much Mark. Do I need to remove McAfee before I do anything?

[MarkRae]

Yes, absolutely! Nothing is guaranteed to shag a system's performance more than multiple AV apps running at the same time...

[tenrec]

That's great, thank you so much for your help.