Aqua-Soft Forumsim looking for the best spyware program for vista. free would be the best but anything that works good would be fine also.
best anti-spyware program for vista?
windows defender has worked fine for me so far
Wait, you mean antispyware, right? I hope you're not trying to figure out how to get spyware on someone's vista box...
Windows defender ftw, also, if AVG antispiware works for vista (I'm not sure if it does), go for that too.
Hehe, that was my reaction when I saw this thread, virstulte.
//Thread Titled Edited for clarity.
-NC
my reaction instead was a little laughter :-) I mean, you still need an anti-spyware on Vista? wasn't all these years of development about security and getting rid of spyware?
however, the best anti-spyware is the user itself 
however, the best anti-spyware is the user itself
He hit the nail on that one..or however that saying goes..lol.
Hey I was looking into this to, Right now I have both Windows Defender and (90 Days Trail) of Windows Live OneCare, but I was woundering if Vista would run faster and safer under somthing like McAfree, Kaspersky or Norton?
All three of those are a PAIN IN THE 455, DUDE. Seriously, they all hog system resources like I've never seen before. I don't know about Live OneCare, but I wouldn't trust anything Microsoft.
I don't doubt microsoft will take money under the table to let certain companies have their way with your computer and the information on it...
i agree with most people... defender is great atm, but I've always been a AVG fan (seeing as its free and works)....
AVG is more thorough I think, and a more complete solution when bundled with AVG antivirus... but for now defender is OK (viruses and spyware arent rampant yet on vista)
Norton seems to be the best for me on my PC. It has a separate version for Vista im sure...
about Norton, there is an interesting article, with even more interesting results. (yes, in the File IO graph, that's a 2000% slower)
I have been using Defender as well with no problems. I have also been using the Ad-Aware 2007 beta as well.
defender dosent show i have anything but when i tried the new spyware doctor it said i had some spyware. 
LAME
so virstulte what anti-virus/spy do you use?
NO NO NO.
NORTON= BAD BAD BAD
ok, sorry enough of capslock.... but seriously, it slows ur pc down to a crawl, has invasive popup messages, lets viruses through and its difficult to see exactly what it does other than cause an annoyance...
furthermore you have to pay for such a dodgy service through live update. no thanx.
well for me Norton has been pretty good on my XP machines. So far I have only had 1 pop-up ever, when i downloaded a virus...it really saved my ass.
i dont really think it lets viruses through, that is unless you deliberatly wanted to infect something...
on my XP machines, the effect of the slowing-down-ness with Norton has been mimimal...i have a 30MB/s cable modem and with Norton the speed is now 26MB/s. not much in my case.
There is one really annoying drawback, though, is that when you are downloading something, there seems to be a up/down wave in its speeds.
Example:
Starts out at around 300Kb/s
starts to drop miserably down to about 12Kb/s
wait about 5 seconds, then starts up again...goes a little farther this time, round 250KB/s
drops down to about 100MB/s
the thing goes on and on until its done. this does get really annoying.
cant complain, though, cuz at least its actually scanning the thing to check if its a virus.
a nice feature i would like to see? a trusted FTP/HTTP source list that will uncap the download speed and wont scan the file being downloaded from the source, thus eliminating the above problem....
-MM3
well for me Norton has been pretty good on my XP machines. So far I have only had 1 pop-up ever, when i downloaded a virus...it really saved my ass.i dont really think it lets viruses through, that is unless you deliberatly wanted to infect something...
on my XP machines, the effect of the slowing-down-ness with Norton has been mimimal...i have a 30MB/s cable modem and with Norton the speed is now 26MB/s. not much in my case.
There is one really annoying drawback, though, is that when you are downloading something, there seems to be a up/down wave in its speeds.
hmmm.... put it this way.... your boot time would be twice as fast if you were to uninstall Norton. It used to be the best, but its really lost the plot in the last few years.
switch to AVG and you will REALLY notice a difference.
I go to lets just say "risky" sites (no not pron 
... no further comment) and I can do so without worry.
Often people blame thier slow computer on the hardware when the problem is that they have a billion spyware and virus programs loading without them even knowing.
A good way to check is to go start>run> type in msconfig and go to the furtherest right tab, if u see any sus looking programs then disable them... but be careful, you can disable programs you need. I know the programs I have running on my machine and those that I need.
But since installing AVG, no programs appear in that list without me noticing... Norton was a different story...
Norton itself is slow to run at boot, and all the viruses/spyware/adware that get thru only slow down boot time further.
ewido from Grisoft(makers of AVG) is awesome. fast, lightweight and not bloatware.
nod32=your best friend
the best one to do the job is probably firefox+ kaspersky. Firefox seems pretty bulletproof with adblock plus enabled, i don't see any popups, adverts or anything distracting enough to click...
since getting kaspersky antivirus, i have had not one problem of spyware on this machine, and bloatware it may be, it can be temporarily disabled during games/ periods of high disk usage. When it comes back online it'll detect any changes and resume protection, although the scan-at-every-boot was a bit excessive so i reduced it.
Sure, it isn't the fastest thing, but i've taken too much crap in the past when it comes to spyware, even nod32 hasn't been able to fix a few already loaded.
ahh. you see? all the reasons to get a mac. no worries about what anti-virus program to install.....nahh j/k i dont wanna flame it.
but yes, norton does double the boot time, but what the hell? my system uptime is about a week now anyway on all my computers...doesnt really bother me...
-MM3
It should if norton isn't doing what it should, and the new versions dont.
I have Norton Internet Security 2007. works like a charm. scans beautifly. Never had a virus with Norton for the 3 years ive been with it. When i had McAfee or whatever, 3 of my PCs got infected with trojans and even 'system currupters', in which case i had to do a fresh reformat. I trust norton to protect my PCs, and even with it, i still use caution on certain sites such as downloading sites.
as said before, common sense is the best anti-virus!
so virstulte what anti-virus/spy do you use?
I use AVG Anti-Virus with AVG Anti-Spyware, and I periodically run CCleaner, Ad-Aware SE, and Spybot S&D. Keeps my computer pretty squeaky clean. Gotta be careful cleaning your registry with CCleaner though, if you fix all the things it brings up, you're gonna wind up screwing up some Flyakite OSX mods 
Oh, and I use Adblock Plus with the Filterset.G updater, and Noscript addons for firefox. Or I will just use opera without javascript enabled if I want to browse quickly.
I used to have AVG, but I find just as god an anti-virus in avast!, which also in no way hinders your computer's performance. it just scans everything in and out, and its database is updated just about every day. It fully supports Vista.
Ad-Aware is a must-have program, as it gets rid of the stuff anti-viruses aren't made to look for, and I've even removed malware with it. I will say, though, that Ad-Aware found less objects on my computer during each scan after installing avast!.