Too many "protection" programs?

[sunnycalifornia]

I currently have Norton 2007, ZoneAlarm Firewall, Windows Defender, Lavasoft Ad-Aware, Spybot Search and Destroy, and a defrag program. Is this too much? I never noticed before but I just noticed today how long it takes for me too boot/shut down, etc. If I do have too many programs, which ones should I remove or replace with?

[DLKeeper1]

i'm not an expert, but supposedly norton is a waste...all of the others are good i believe

[erbbysam]

you could probably shut off Norton or Defender because they both do essentially the same thing but you should have the rest, you don't need Ad-Aware, Spybot & the defrag program to start up though, that may be caused by other things.
Spybot has a built in startup program tool under in it's "advanced mode" which you can use to keep non-essential things from starting up when you login (ie. itunes ect.)

[Enervate]

NOD32 (anti virus)

Avg anti spyware (spyware remover)

Zone Alarm free (firewall)

optional extras:

Adaware se (spyware remover)

Spy bot search and destroy (spyware remover)

ATF Cleaner (temp files remover)

CCLeaner (temp files remover)

[sunnycalifornia]

As of right now I only have ZoneAlarm firewall and Norton as my startup programs I think. I tried to disable Norton but startup/shut down was still very slow so I am thinking it might by ZoneAlarm that is slowing my computer down unless I have other processes/programs running that I don't know. Is there any way to find out?

[mattnxtc]

Run msconfig.exe and see whats starting up

[Beavis68]

I have read pretty good things about Norton 2007. Does it contain a firewall?

Turning off Windows defender sounds like a good place to start like erbby said

Many times Virus software doesn't uninstall completely. If you only have the firewall version of ZA it will not slow your system down.

Also, set Norton so it doesn't scan your system at startup and doesn't scan files everytime you open them. Scan anything new that is suspicious and scan your system once a week or so and you should be in good shape.

[kooze]

[ QUOTE ]
I have read pretty good things about Norton 2007.

[/ QUOTE ]

I had Norton 360 on my laptop. It took too long to boot, took way too much memory- and I still got a virus- not exactly worth the $70 for the program.

I now have McAfee- what a difference. So much faster and not a memory pig.

[choccypie]

Norton is a waste of time, overhyped and bloats your system. Zonealarm is ok but in most cases windows firewall is more than good enough. Spyboy S&D pretty much handles any spyware/adware/hijackers for you, so you could actually uninstall Ad-Aware.

I don't personally use a defrag program, but I format my PC every 2/3 months and have found defragging doesn't really make a difference to performance. As for antivirus I use NOD32, it basically sits in your system tray taking very little resources, downloads updates automatically in the background, and it only alerts you if it detects something harmful. It also auto scans any files you download, if they're bad it tells you about it, otherwise you don't hear anything from it. It's definitely the best AV I've ever used [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Beavis68]

I will have to check out NOD.