SSBA

Both my PC and the wife/kids laptop have been ridiculously slow and non-responsive lately.....so I've been working through some maintenance on them to the best of my ability. If you could please let me know if there is anything glaring I can do that I haven't, I'd really appreciate it.

Both PC's:

Removed old/unused programs
Cleared cookies/temp.internet files/cleared history
Removed old/useless data (spreadsheets,photos,documents)
Downloaded and run Norton Anti-Spy from Yahoo
Run Windows update and updated what there was to update
Defragged.

++ on my PC:
Run Norton LiveUpdate, then scanned

++ on wife/kids laptop (this is the one that needs plenty of work and will be providing me with ears and eyes on the world during my vacation, so anything you can offer about making it run smooth would help...)
 
About to install and run Kaspersky AV - which the guys at the Source said is awesome, I got at a good proce and they say kicks the shit out of Norton without slowing down performance.

Anything glaring I'm missing? (They're not the most powerful machines in the world, and I'm not too skilled a user, so try to keep it simple please)

Thanks in advance guys....this stuff has been bugging me, I'd love to get it hammered down!

I say just get rid of the wife/kids.  That should clear a lot of your troubles up!

 :lol2:

A bad update from Norton crashed two computers of mine...I don't go with them anymore, that's just me though.  I don't know a lot about computers but anytime I see Norton I get nervous.

running a firewall, such as ZoneAlarm???  I would run ad-aware as well...

I'm thinking about it!

 8)

Ughh - sorry to hear.
I'm gonna trial this new recommended AV program and see how it handles - if it's as good as the fellas say, I'll install it on my machine too in place of Norton. Norton does slow everything down, that's for sure.

Thanks. These are free-ware, no? How helpful do you find them?

www.gentoo.org

;)

In all seriousness, one simple step to take to prevent this from happening in the future is to never login as an administrative user.  Always login as a regular user, then if you need to install something, right click on what you need to install and select 'Run as', and run it as a separate administrative account you've setup.  Most malware/viruses can be prevented by not running your browser with full admin access.

Both can be found for free online...  I believe there might be a fee for the full/premium versions...  I try to run ad-aware every couple of days...  Zone Alarm has been a great/free firewall for me...

I'm using Kaspersky and its really good. Award winner, IIRC.

Also, you can search warez-bb.org for free programs.

for me the best anti-virus is NOD32... 

you could also fix your registry using Uniblue registry booster...this should speed things up

The IT guy at my work suggested AVG 8.0, which has antivirus and andti-spyware - I ran it, which took about 48 houts, and it identified 44 or so spywares which I've removed. But responsiveness is a huge issure atm, so I think I will try this Regristry Booster, Heat, thanks for the suggestion which sounds like a big part of my problem.

So, after uninstalling tons, running AV, and a registy cleaner (a free one) things seem much better. Thanks to all for the help and suggestions!