Death and Rebirth of a friend

[Isaol-the-wolf]

At 11:13pm a good friend Master Chief AKA Windows XP Compaq Presario S4020WM, met his unfortunate demise. However I am glad to announce that he will be back. Ressurected.

ANYWAY, Im going to have a completly new computer, basicaly, any suggestions on how to make my computer the best he can be? I know I need virus protection, but is there any other program that will allow me to fully utilize my computer?  

[Garek Maxwell]

As far as maintenance goes, I have a program that may help. Though for firewalls, I recommend zone alarm. For virus scanning and such, I'd say AVG.

Outside of this, there's a GREAT program for cleaning up stuff on your computer. It's called CCleaner. It scans your computer for pretty unnecessary files and gets rid of them. It can also help fully uninstall programs I believe... Oh, and it comes with a registry cleaner that'll remove broken entries or whatever. It's really nice.
http://www.ccleaner.com/
Here's a link.  

[Isaol-the-wolf]

Garek Maxwell

As far as maintenance goes, I have a program that may help. Though for firewalls, I recommend zone alarm. For virus scanning and such, I'd say AVG.

Outside of this, there's a GREAT program for cleaning up stuff on your computer. It's called CCleaner. It scans your computer for pretty unnecessary files and gets rid of them. It can also help fully uninstall programs I believe... Oh, and it comes with a registry cleaner that'll remove broken entries or whatever. It's really nice.
http://www.ccleaner.com/
Here's a link.

Ya, but ccleaner may not think Half-life 2 is a neccesary porgram. I want to have SpyBot Search and Destroy, its free it works well, AVG is kind of the low class of virus protection, I did a scan with AVG and it couldnt find half the viruses that SpyBot found. Also Avast, another anti-virus program, its free for 30 days, its very very good at protecting your computer, however it constantly insists that programs such as YahooIM be deleted since it's not 110% safe.

The cause of Master Chief's death was me downloading Daemon Tools for free, which insisted I restart my computer so I complied and paid the price before I did a virus scan on it.  

[Rastiel]

I've heard good things about Avast!  

[Isaol-the-wolf]

CoffeeFox

I've heard good things about Avast!

Its quite good, depends, its a bit over protective for me, blocked me from playing counter strike online. Blocked me from using any IM. Its like it put me in a cage and told me "Its for your own protection." So if your novice when it comes to computer stuff, Avast is difficult to manage. I download it every saturday just to do ONE virus scan, then I unistall it.  

[Account_Closed_HACKS]

That's odd, I have no problem playing games or instant messaging using Avast! Home. I've used it for two or three years now and it has actually saved me from infection countless time (not my fault).

As for other programs. Zonealarm is a good firewall, but if you want more control for free and you don't mind tinkering, Comodo works too. http://personalfirewall.comodo.com/

I noticed that no one has offered any antispyware apps.

Here's a list I use.

MalwareBytes Antimalware - http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php The trial version allows scans and removal on a manual scan basis.

Lavasoft's Ad-aware - http://www.lavasoft.com/

Super Anti-spyware - www.superantispyware.com/ Free version doesn't offer real time protection but it works.

And Spyware Doctor Starter Edition, which is part of the Google Pack, at least as of this posting.

You can also use the OpenDNS DNS server to help speed and protect your computer too, go to http://www.opendns.com/ and follow the instructions.

There are other things you can do but this is a good start.  

[Account_Closed_HACKS]

Also looking above, Certain avast products are 30 day trials, Make sure you install Avast! home and register for free. You can keep doing this each year for free as well.  

[Isaol-the-wolf]

I have the trial version of Norton, Full Spybot Search and Destroy, and AVG.


Okay I need some more help

I didnt get the computer new back when my dad bought it, it had tons of stuff, flash player, anti-virus, media players, fully updated. Now that I deleted everythink with that restore disc, I have to start over, Its been difficult, I cant play counter strike because I lack the "Unknown" software. My regular internet explorer shuts down every 5 minutes. Mozilla (in my opinion) sucks, I cant play other games to because I lack the software, ive been installing updates non-stop. I miss my old slow Master Chief who could get done what I wanted to do, since I restored it, its..hasn't been working out. Im missing alot of extra software to do things. DOES ANYONE KNOW OF ANY PLACE I CAN GET EXTRA WINDOWS STUFF? DOWNLOAD, PREFERABLY FREE.