Weird problem and a question concerning AV + firewalls.

[ktadie]

Weird problem and a question concerning AV + firewalls.

Here there guys, my problem is pretty weird and has been

happening lately.

My laptop strangly freezes, so I have to restart it. It happens when

I have no active program running (i.e. music playing, a game, downloading)

and isntead of going from my screen saver to standby/sleep, it freezes.

What happens is that the mouse stops to work, my external Hard drive

displays that it has been disconnected from my laptop. The power switch

and power indicator (showing that the computer is on and "active") lights,

and the light for the shortcuts, cpu usage and everything is on.. But, it dosn't

respond to anything that I try to do with it, from the keyboard. F2 spam, Ctrl, Alt Dlt,

etc. dosn't work. This results into me having to manually switch it off, and turn it

back on...

Now why is this happening? :S

One thing that might be affecting it is that I recently (well a month ago) got a new driver

for my laptop's nvidia card. it is the 174.93 ..

My laptop spec's are:

Windows Vista Ultimate

t7100 Duo 1.8Ghz

nVidia 8600

2gig Ram.

This is getting REALLY annoying.. Any suggestiongs? ;p

Now my question is about my Antivirus, Firewall and security software.

Should I purchase an "All-in-one" security suite, that has both firewall,

maleware, AV, spyscanner etc. or should I buy an AV program, and a

firewall program?

This should be based on their CPU/memory usage. Which, do you guys

think, will eat up more RAM? A big program with everytihng, or two seperate programs?

Thanks a bunch in advanced guys!

Ktadie

[Michael Marley]

First, as for your computer hard-locking problem, I would run a memory test. There is one called MemTest86+ that works very well. (Just Google it) You might also try booting in a Linux LiveCD and see if the problem occurs there. As for buying antivirus/firewall, here is my recommendation: For antivirus, use AVG Free. It will do everything you need, and it has quite good detection. And, as the name states, it is completely Free. For firewall, use the Windows Firewall. It is not the best, but it adequately blocks incoming malicious traffic. For Spyware, I recommend downloading both Spybot S+D and AdAware. Both of these are free, and between them, they catch just about everything that exists. Hope this works for you.

[Cc7]

If your Memory test comes out ok you might try out a few other drivers and see if they also have the same issue. Possibly from another series. 175.xx 177.xx or what ever series you like.

To address the firewall AV question. If your not running anything now it might be a good idea to do a clean install of your OS after you pick what security programs your going to use. The time it takes for an unprotected PC connected to the internet to become infected is only a matter of minutes. Don?t freak out.. that?s with nothing at all.. No antivirus no windows firewall no router firewall.

Avast and AVG are good free antivirus solutions and if you ever wanted a second opinion Bitdefender has a good free online scanner. ZoneAlarm and Comodo are both good free firewalls with incoming and outgoing protection. It may take some time to learn what to allow and deny but its worth the effort. Use the Windows Defender (not the best but has real time scanning) for spyware protection. And there are a slew of free programs to check for rootkits, spyware, malware etc. all just a google away. Stick to known and recommended software whether from here or another forum because there are some shady programs online that will install exactly what they claim to prevent.

Firewall - ZoneAlarm or Comodo

Virus Scanner - Avast or AVG

Antispyware - Windows Defender

Although ?a-squared free? is a scanner only and doesn?t have real time protection I recommend using it along with the above to scan for malware, trojans, worms, bots. rootkits etc. ?Spybot search and destroy? and ?Ad-Aware? are also good free spyware scanners. Often one will catch what the other misses.

If you decide to buy an all in one do a search for ?Top rated security suites? and compare the results of at least 3 reputable sites. Be sure your looking at current 2008 results because your going to find a lot of old test as well. I see you have 2 gigs of ram so memory usage isn?t going to be a huge issue but I like your thinking (keep it light). Also you should know that the all-in-ones are not just one program but a complete set of programs by the same software company often having just one control panel. This can be good in that your only buying one license every year and not 3 or 4 different licenses every year.

Security basics: Only install one firewall program and one Antivirus program. More than one can/will cause problems. Completely uninstall the previous firewall or antivirus program before you install another. Some antivirus programs may need a special removal tool to finish the job (I think Norton was/is? one of these). I said you don?t want to install two antivirus programs and this is true but you can run the bitdefender online virus scanner with an antivirus program installed on your computer. According to their forum it doesn?t install any processes on your PC and is 100% compatible with other antivirus programs. Lastly always install a firewall and antivirus program before you connect a pc to the internet.

[CrazyCrack]

Well about freezing i had got a similar issue and a solution that worked for me was to edit my Advanced power settings i turned off shutting down of hard disk after some idle time and everything works fine now.

[Exile1975]

personally i like kaspersky. they have both an antivirus, or an internet protection suite. both are light footprint, and well rated. they are not however free. spybot is the only spyware/malware program i use tho.

[ktadie]

First, as for your computer hard-locking problem, I would run a memory test. There is one called MemTest86+ that works very well. (Just Google it) You might also try booting in a Linux LiveCD and see if the problem occurs there. As for buying antivirus/firewall, here is my recommendation: For antivirus, use AVG Free. It will do everything you need, and it has quite good detection. And, as the name states, it is completely Free. For firewall, use the Windows Firewall. It is not the best, but it adequately blocks incoming malicious traffic. For Spyware, I recommend downloading both Spybot S+D and AdAware. Both of these are free, and between them, they catch just about everything that exists. Hope this works for you.

If your Memory test comes out ok you might try out a few other drivers and see if they also have the same issue. Possibly from another series. 175.xx 177.xx or what ever series you like.

To address the firewall AV question. If your not running anything now it might be a good idea to do a clean install of your OS after you pick what security programs your going to use. The time it takes for an unprotected PC connected to the internet to become infected is only a matter of minutes. Don?t freak out.. that?s with nothing at all.. No antivirus no windows firewall no router firewall.

Avast and AVG are good free antivirus solutions and if you ever wanted a second opinion Bitdefender has a good free online scanner. ZoneAlarm and Comodo are both good free firewalls with incoming and outgoing protection. It may take some time to learn what to allow and deny but its worth the effort. Use the Windows Defender (not the best but has real time scanning) for spyware protection. And there are a slew of free programs to check for rootkits, spyware, malware etc. all just a google away. Stick to known and recommended software whether from here or another forum because there are some shady programs online that will install exactly what they claim to prevent.

Firewall - ZoneAlarm or Comodo

Virus Scanner - Avast or AVG

Antispyware - Windows Defender

Although ?a-squared free? is a scanner only and doesn?t have real time protection I recommend using it along with the above to scan for malware, trojans, worms, bots. rootkits etc. ?Spybot search and destroy? and ?Ad-Aware? are also good free spyware scanners. Often one will catch what the other misses.

If you decide to buy an all in one do a search for ?Top rated security suites? and compare the results of at least 3 reputable sites. Be sure your looking at current 2008 results because your going to find a lot of old test as well. I see you have 2 gigs of ram so memory usage isn?t going to be a huge issue but I like your thinking (keep it light). Also you should know that the all-in-ones are not just one program but a complete set of programs by the same software company often having just one control panel. This can be good in that your only buying one license every year and not 3 or 4 different licenses every year.

Security basics: Only install one firewall program and one Antivirus program. More than one can/will cause problems. Completely uninstall the previous firewall or antivirus program before you install another. Some antivirus programs may need a special removal tool to finish the job (I think Norton was/is? one of these). I said you don?t want to install two antivirus programs and this is true but you can run the bitdefender online virus scanner with an antivirus program installed on your computer. According to their forum it doesn?t install any processes on your PC and is 100% compatible with other antivirus programs. Lastly always install a firewall and antivirus program before you connect a pc to the internet.

Well about freezing i had got a similar issue and a solution that worked for me was to edit my Advanced power settings i turned off shutting down of hard disk after some idle time and everything works fine now.

THanks for the reply guys. Sorry, I was kidnapped to my summer house :o

anyways,

MY main problem is this weird issue when my laptop does its bizzare freeze.

Michael Marley, that program looks good, but I don't know how to use it..

lol. I hoped that it was just a program I could download and run.. but it looks like

I need to download it on a cd/memory stick, plug that to my laptop and then run it?

CrazyCrack I tried looking in my Power Saver tihngy, but I couldn't find anything

in mine.. I have an acer and its "Empowering Technology" .

Now for the Antivirus and Firewal question;

I know my laptop has 2 gig Ram, but, this

laptop wil be by my side for many years to

come, so I want it to stay "young and fresh"

but.. I think it's already geting slower :S

I think that it will be best to choose two seperate

programs, instead of one big secuirty package.

Cc7 Thanks for trhe tips mate! I was thinking about

getting Zone alarm's firewall and either NOD32 or AVG Free/PRo.

For zone alarm, is there a greater diference inbetween the free

version and the PRo version? and the Same for AVG, is it worth

the extra 25-50USD? ^^

thanks alot again guys.

[Michael Marley]

Michael Marley, that program looks good, but I don't know how to use it..

lol. I hoped that it was just a program I could download and run.. but it looks like

I need to download it on a cd/memory stick, plug that to my laptop and then run it?

Which program is this? All the ones I referenced should install directly to the hard disk.

[ktadie]

Which program is this? All the ones I referenced should install directly to the hard disk.

Hmm, I found this, which is the one that confused me:

http://www.memtest.org/

then I searched on softpedia, and got this:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Benchm...st86-plus.shtml

and I think you meant that one right? Seeing all the other utilities there,

it''s hard to choose which one I should download ;p But, I will stick to

the one you suggested, and then post my results?

External Cd or Floppy version? lol, I thought this would just be an .exe program to install on my cdrive.

Edited August 2, 2008 by ktadie

[Michael Marley]

Yes, you must either burn it on a CD or write it to a floppy. As an alternative, if you have any Linux LiveCDs laying around, most of those have Memtest86+ on them.