Effect Of Antispyware Effect of antispyware on system performance

[Nik1405241546 0]

I am looking to install a suitable version of antispyware software in my windows 2000 computer. I am a bit concerned it may slow down my computer. Have you experienced any deterioration in computer's performance due to the presence of antispyware?Is there any other way to avoid attacks from spyware? How do I know if spyware is attacking my computer?

[wutske 0]

Prevent spyware: do not use Internet Explorer, most malware programs are writte to exploit this browser. Firefox is a lot more safe, but because of its growing popularity, it's becomming a new target. Same goes for Outlook (Express), alternative software is a lot better (especialy if they don't use the Internet Explorer core to show e-mails).Another way to prevent malware is by being smart, don't click on malicious links, don't dowload things you don't trust, etc ...How do you know if it's too late: most of the time, you won't even notice, that's the problem. In some cases you might notice higher CPU usage, higher disk usage and sometimes even a serious performance drop.The effect of antispyware: Probably something near a 5% performance drop, but I think it's worth. My suggestion is to have at least the following things installed and running in the background: a virusscanner and a firewall (for XP or Vista users, the Windows Firewall isn't enough, you'll need a firewall that also filters outgoing traffic). These will filter out the most malicious programs. Doing a regular complete scan with Lavasoft Adaware and Spybot S&D is more than enough, having them running in the background isn't needed if you don't use Internet Explorer (I personaly use Opera and I've never had something detected, except maybe a cookie from that one time I have to use IE).

[WeaponX 0]

Nik, take a look at my Anti-Spyware Tutorial:

http://www.greyknight17.com/spyware.php

Most of the programs won't even require you to run it in the background. So you know it won't be using much resources even when they are running. All the ones listed on my site there are free to use. I rarely recommend using a paid anti-spyware program since I find that the free ones will be able to eliminate a majority of the spyware related files already. No programs are perfect, so even paid anti-spyware programs will miss a bug here and there