Hi Tmagic,
Quite totally to the contrary.
I have always had the best anti-virus protection I could find and have used it for a good 4 years at least through several evolutions of the program over that time. Its called,now, System Suite 7 Professional, its anti-virus section is actually from Trend Micro whom I'm sure you're familiar with, and gives me almost daily virus definition updates, etc. It of course runs 24/7 with the system, which I never turn off unless I'm going to be away for more than 48hrs, or if I'm doing anything inside the case ( blowing out dust for example), or installing a new printer or scanner, or something of the sort
I wouldn't ,for example, be caught dead using Norton System Works or any part of it----highly system invasive and resource hogging--the only Symantec product I use (AND LOVE!) is Ghost.
I'm aware of the existence of many anti-virus things like AVG, Ewido, Panda, Kaspersky, McAfee, etc-----but have been totally satisfied with the protection provided by what I've been using.
I also have Trend Micro Housecall ( highly rated free online utility that totally will scan a system), and Trend Micro Sysclean which actually can be installed into a system, gets daily virus pattern updates, and does a total system scan just like Housecall.
I actually have a major fetish/constructive paranoia about system protection and have made it a primary goal to find/run a combination of software that provides as complete system protection as I can find. Thats why , although running 1 antivirus because just like firewalls only one should be run in a system, I do have several different anti-spware utilities. The specific reason for multiple spyware utilities is that when I had a chance to try them, I found that each one (that I have installed) catches things the others don't. That applies to SpySweeper, XoftSpy, Pest Patrol, Trend Micro Anti-Spyware especially. Also in my arsenal are Spybot Search and Destroy, Nixory (from Source Forge), Rootkit Revealer, F-Secure Blacklight, Trend Micro's new Rootkit Buster, Spyware Blaster, and Spyware Guard. I am sending you a link to check that is a total validation of what I just stated:
http://spywarewarrior.com/asw-test-guide.htm
I'm sure the thought has already crossed your mind that having so much stuff installed and/or running could create conflicts between programs--thus far what I do have in and running has to the best of my knowledge not caused a problem--everything seems run as it should and disabling them did not seem to affect BSOD or error message generation in any way (with the possible exception of SpySweeper per one BSOD that was analyzed many posts back in this thread)
I have, as repeatedly stated in earlier posts, totally disabled SpySweeper along with almost all my other antispyware and will not activate them till at least several more days have passed with no BSOD events, error messages in Event Viewer, etc. Then, its going to be a one-at-a-time reactivation scenario per my comments last night.
I'd be HIGHLY interested in what you use for antivirus and protection from all the malware, spyware, and grayware that the internet is increasingly becoming tainted with.
I am proud to say that I have never gotten a virus infection that I know of, although I've gotten many warnings about them when using Dr. Web ( a COOL Firefox addon that lets you virus check something being considered for download before ever actually downloading it), or checking a download via the System Suite virus checker before opening it.
It is now 130 AM Fri. PST and I am happy to report that since 1030 PM Sun., with the exception of the 1 BSOD I generated on a reboot after running Verifier.exe, the system has been BSOD free and the only error messages in Event Viewer have been few, very far between events, and related solely to DHCP. Since uninstalling Adobe Type Manager that was referred to in that screen, I have (per last nights post) run Verifier w/ no issues on the reboot at prompt. What I haven't been able to do though is track down and analyze the findings generated by Verifier--a simple explanation of how to do that would be most helpful.
Wait to hear from you and will post developments tomorrow.
Best, Peter PS: the things that I earlier referred to as "my problem here was that things had been 'broke' for many months w/o my knowing it" was referring to what has turned out (apparently) to be driver issues--at least, since updating drivers, things seem to have stabilized.
What, if anything, happens as I step by step reactivate currently disabled stuff should be enlightening to say the least