Trade off for security?

[TheWildInside]

Well, been toodlin' around online tryin' out my ZoneAlarm settings and watching a few of my other new and newly updated guardian programs do their thing, and have a couple observations.

One - After upgrading to SpyBot v1.4 on Saturday and then updating the 1/12/07 Smitfraud fixes, it took 3 hours and 17 minutes to scan my system (it rarely ever took more than ten minutes prior to these changes). A tech over on SpyBot's forum mentioned several others experienced this scan slow down as well, and one fix seems to be to disable AVG Anti-Virus before scanning. Another is to uninstall v1.4, reinstall and grab updates on the SpyBot site rather than through the software. Just a heads up if anyone else is experiencing similar slowdowns with SpyBot scanning.

Two - Neither my IE or Netscape browsers now work. I can only assume that I've deleted something during my wild deletion of unnecessary file period that was actually necessary. Should I uninstall and grab new, updated versions of them to install?? Many sites I use to purchase things for my business don't work well in AOL and I need at least IE to complete orders.

Three - and this is the biggie. EVERYthing on my system is now in VERY slow mode. I thought perhaps after all the software downloading, file deleting, cleaning, and then deleting the software I no longer needed after fixing the problems, that a good defrag would help, but not only did my system tell me it wasn't necessary - after doing it anyway, it really didn't help. I actually did a hard drive overhaul after all that infection cleaning last week and even with the new guardian programs loaded, I have fewer programs than I did before. I now have running Ad-Aware SE Personal, AVG Anti-Spyware and Anti-Virus, SpyBot and the free version of ZoneAlarm. Is it these programs that are slowing everything down? I mean, I'm on dial-up here, so I'm pretty slow when I'm online anyway, but now it seems like I can go get a cup of coffee, throw a load of laundry in, come back, and the page I was looking for has still not loaded. Any suggestions for even a little system speed up?

Also, I was *continually* locating incidences of ViewPoint on my laptop, even after repeated deletions in multiple locations, over and over again. This seemed to stop after ZoneAlarm was activated. Can anyone tell me WHAT this ViewPoint thing is or was?? Dangerous? Innocuous? I just wanna know that if some friendly program is putting it there and whether or not to deny access when ZoneAlarm requests a response.

OK .. I'm done now. Any assistance with the speed thing would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!

Karan (who's car is now snuggled up in the garage in anticipation of four to ten inches of snow this evening!)

 

[Daveskater]

it could be that some of your programs are conflicting which can cause major slow down. i had conflicts once and it took 5 minuets (no joke) to open microsoft word. i have all the programs on your list and i have no problems, it could be something to do with the new spybot version. try closing that down and see if it's any better. if it's no different then open it up again, activate the windows firewall and shutdown zone alarm. it's known to cause problems, i have zone alarm security suite and sometimes i end up closing it to speed things up a bit. i know the windows firewall isn't on the top of everyone's list but it's better than nothing. i rarely seem to get infected, but that may be helped by the router's firewall.

anyway, try what i've said there and see if it helps and post a new reply. before you close the programs, though, press ctrl, alt + delete and see what your idle cpu usage is and if something (other than system idle processes) is using it all.

 

[kitty500cat]

Have you read the Viruses/Spyware/Malware, preliminary removal instructions? If not, follow the link I just gave and follow all the instructions exactly. Then post fresh HJT and AVG Antispyware logs as attachments into this thread.

Cheers

This thread is for the use of TheWildInside only. Please don`t post your own virus/spyware problems in this thread. Instead, open a new thread in the Security and the Web forum.