Security and the PC

Alan · Mar-12-2006

How much time do you spend cleaning, optimizing, checking for spyware. adware, scumware, viruses on your PC every week?

With the many hundreds of software available which do you prefer?

I spend about 5 hours a week running optimers, cleaners, tune-up programs, spyware and antivirus programs. To me (and yes I leave them runnning while I get on with something else) that is a lot of time just to keep my machine running smooth and fault free.

So it would be interesting to learn what programs you like the best and how much time you spend keeping your machine free of garbage.

Daniel · Mar-12-2006

Basically I do the following (in order):

1. Remove temp files using:
a) Windows Disk Cleanup
b) TuneUp Utilities 2006 Disk Cleaner
c) CCleaner

2. Scanning for viruses using:
a) AntiVir Personal Edition

3. Scanning for other malware using:
a) Lavasoft Ad-Aware Professional Edition
b) Microsoft Defender Beta
c) Scan Spyware
d) Spybot Search & Destroy

4. Registry Cleaning using:
a) TuneUp Utilities 2006 1-Click maintenance
b) TuneUp Utlities 2006 Registry Cleaner
c) CCleaner Issues
d) RegSeeker

5. Defragmentation using:
a) PerfectDisk for Hard Drives

b) TuneUp Utilities 2006 Registry Defrag for the Registry
6. Error Checking using:
a) Windows Error-Checking

... it takes approximately 5 hrs on this old machine. I run each tool at a time in the order above, since I cannot afford running any of them at the same time because it will become really slow.