Nominate an anti-virus and anti-spyware prog for me.

[ajak]

You don’t want/have antivirus/firewall...YOU ARE GOING TO MURDER YOUR PC (don’t you love you PC anymore?

 

[Artagra]

AVG + Zone Alarm + Windows Defender

Relatively lean and easy to setup.

Artagra

 

[guang]

I used to have ZoneAlarm pro+Kasparsky 6.0,now I am using ZoneAlarm Security Suite,never had a single virus or spyware.

 

[Highflyer_GP]

To test your firewall go to this link.

https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

According to that site, scanning file-sharing ports:

Your Internet port 139 does not appear to exist!
One or more ports on this system are operating in FULL STEALTH MODE! Standard Internet behavior requires port connection attempts to be answered with a success or refusal response. Therefore, only an attempt to connect to a nonexistent computer results in no response of either kind. But YOUR computer has DELIBERATELY CHOSEN NOT TO RESPOND (that's very cool!) which represents advanced computer and port stealthing capabilities. A machine configured in this fashion is well hardened to Internet NetBIOS attack and intrusion.

Unable to connect with NetBIOS to your computer.
All attempts to get any information from your computer have FAILED. (This is very uncommon for a Windows networking-based PC.) Relative to vulnerabilities from Windows networking, this computer appears to be VERY SECURE since it is NOT exposing ANY of its internal NetBIOS networking protocol over the Internet.

Scanning all service ports:

Your system has achieved a perfect "TruStealth" rating. Not a single packet — solicited or otherwise — was received from your system as a result of our security probing tests. Your system ignored and refused to reply to repeated Pings (ICMP Echo Requests). From the standpoint of the passing probes of any hacker, this machine does not exist on the Internet. Some questionable personal security systems expose their users by attempting to "counter-probe the prober", thus revealing themselves. But your system wisely remained silent in every way. Very nice.

Running AVG and SP2 built-in firewall. Go figure

 

[Jeeva]

I passed all tests Guess what I'm running?

ZoneAlarm! Security Suite


I concur Jeeva, that's the best out there.

On a normal day I would use a gateway pc running FreeBSD for a firewall with only Avast! installed on my computer for AV but since my gateway box aint up and running, I'm running ZoneLabs ZoneAlarm Security Suite

[Firewall On - Anti-Virus On - E-mail Screening Off - IM Protection Off].

Works great on 1500mhz / 512mb + System.

But I also installed it on my IRC/browsing pc (1.1Ghz Thunderbird / 512MB PC133)... really hog`d up the system when I enabled all the features on it.

AVG + Zone Alarm + Windows Defender

Relatively lean and easy to setup.

Artagra

The more programs you run = the more processes Windows has to deal with = more CPU usage = sucky performance, Same with computer hardware. My MB has nVidia nForce onboard (Great sound), Gigabit Nic, RAID, SATA. But I would never use it. It all leads to slower performing system.

 

[The_Right_Honourable_Brit]

Zone Alarm Security Suite - has all the relevant programs [firewall/Email checker/AV/spyware etc.]

However you might just want to have AVG working in tandem with ZA Security Suite for extra protection.

 

[Ekhaatvensters]

I use Netlimiter Pro, with tthe Firewall feature, it is very basic but works okay. Just as good as Zone Alarm or Outpost, minus some features. I want to run the app anyway to tell me how much bandwidth I have used and runnign a seperate Firewall is murder.. This save alot of recourses for me at least.

Then NOD32 AV to take care of viruses, it is yet to fail me. Plus it is the lowest recourse user out of the AV bunch, yet hte most powerfull. It rocks.

But kaspersky suite is also great.

 

[Toxin]

Running AVG and SP2 built-in firewall. Go figure

What did you set the security level at?

 

[Highflyer_GP]

What did you set the security level at?

Custom level, kind of between medium and high. Basically changed all the ActiveX control options to 'prompt' and disabled any scripting, except for Java applets.

 

[Zizzy]

AV: AVG
Anti Spyware: Xsoft Spy
Anti AD Aware: AD Aware Pro
FW: COMODO Personal Firewall