Vista - Best way to Protect a Computer?

Hi!

I have a HP Computer. It came with Windows Live One Care witch I find fantastic. I would like some help with some of the best program protection possible to help keep my computer away from risk. Such as:

Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, Extra Protection, Virus Vault, Scanning ECT.

I am not too good with computers, the whole protection thing, so some help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Hi Mathieu19,

I have heard of 'Windows Live One Care', although I do not use it myself and therefore cannot offer you an opinion on it. What I do use on my system is 'Kaspersky Internet Security 2009', 'Spybot S&D' and 'Ad-Aware' (links given below). I also use 'Windows Defender'.
Antivirus Software: Kaspersky Lab - Protection Against Malware and Cybercrime
The home of Spybot-S&D!
Ad-Aware @ Lavasoft - The Original Anti-Spyware Company - Lavasoft

Results and comments - matousec.com

As you can see, Windows Live One Care does not do anything for you; a 5% success rate is beyond pitiful, thus, LIC is pointless.

To be honest, the best defense is you. Having said that, the top 3 AV apps are made by Kasperky, BitDefender and EST's NOD32.... NOD 32 is, to date, the best of the best as far as Vista is concerned. Keep in mind, no AV app is 100% effective, which is where you come in.

A couple weeks ago a new clickjacking exploit was release, and, to date, there is no fix, so the only defense is Firefox's No-Scripts.

Here is an excellent website on how to properly protect your computer
mechBgon's guide for first-time PC builders... Best practices for ongoing security

Those results are useless. Alot of those tests are handled by parts of security suites they intentionally left out in the installation. The firewall should monitor my network traffic, not my software (I have antimalware software for that)....

If you have vista 64, comodo firewall works well... I think if you have 32 bit then Comodo/Outpost/Online armor would be your best bet for firewall.

Now antivirus I would personally use Avast antivirus.... Very good antivirus that is free...Plus its compatible with both Vista 32 and 64...

Spywareblaster is a decent program as well and is free.

I would also on occasion run any one of these programs, Ad-aware, spybot search and destroy, superantispyware....

To be honest most people that is about all you will need... You can get most of these programs from Majorgeeks.com a good trustworthy site to download from. hope this helps.

That link you were giving is not useless it is highly usefull..... Those firewalls rated high are some of the best ones you can buy.... Firewalls do moniter your network, they also create rules to allow the software you choose to run,,, They also try and keep things from running like malware virus you may have accidently installed.....

Antimalware programs are only a small peace of the protection puzzle



Sorry for the double post my mistake.

The results are misleading and it's definetely not unbiased. They charge companies for running through a full test of software. And I wouldn't be surprised if they manipulate results to make paying companies look better too.

All software should be tested on 100% equal terms. In the case of Matousec, it's only equal for paying companies. That makes it useless in my book.

I have used a lot of different AV programs, and I currently use Avira AntiVir Security Suite Premium. I deal with malware on a daily basis at work, and the absolute worst AV suites are AVG, McAfee and Norton, the majority of infected PCs I see are running these programs.

For a good comparison of different antivirus programs, this is a good site:

AV-Comparatives

What I use, Router/Windows Firewall/AVG/Spybot S&D/Ad-Aware.
And the most important one of all, Firefox. It is loads safer that IE.