Computer viruses can cause a lot of performance issues with our computers. And anti-virus programs are not all of equal quality either. Add to this the problems we have with mal-ware and spy-ware and the money spent is tremendous, plus the added hours of work it requires.
These anti-virus programs vary from high quality to low quality. Many of the best known software programs aren’t successful in eliminating even the most common viruses we encounter.
It wouldn’t be proper for me to use actual company names but I would encourage you to talk to other technicians that work on computers about their opinions… you will probably be surprised. One time, after working for hours on problems involving a static IP, we discovered that the virus protection program was actually causing the problem. The ISP’s tech guy working with me, told me that they had encountered a tremendous amount of problems with this “best” known virus program… and they did not use it or endorse its use.
And I have also asked several pc technicians which program they recommend and have gotten some good advice as well as heard several bad stories about these well known software companies. And I have seen this personally in more than one PC that I have worked on and had to replace the existing anti-virus to solve its problems.
Avast and AVG software and a couple of other anti-virus applications have performed real good for me. The thing I like best about Avast is its “boot scan”. What that does is perform a scan of your computer before Windows comes on.. in DOS. That way it can search the data files in their raw state. It seems to find viruses that the others don’t.
Viruses are the leading problem in slow computer performance but registry issues are a close second. Our experience with some of the registry cleaning software has been outstanding as well. Reading other testimonials should be a good way to help you decide if this is the way for you to go.