Utilities?

[rcb]

First of all, hi all. :)

This is my first post and I had a question about what utilities are safe to run on a overclocked F131 (I'm still waiting on my system). I'm especially interested in spyware removal utilities, as a lot of them "fix" registry errors and I wondered if they are safe to use. Generally, the utilities I use are ZoneAlarm firewall, Norton anti-virus, and AdAware for spyware removal.

On a sad note, I was a bit disappointed in tech support because I emailed them with this question on Thursday and have received no reply. I really expected better, after what I had heard about MG. :cry:

Here's what I ordered,

Exterior Automotive Color: Black Aluminum Finish
Side Window: Translucent Window Side Panel w/ LED Lighting Bundle
Power Supply: MAINGEAR 750W Ultra Quiet Power Supply
Motherboard: NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI Motherboard
Processor: E6600 Core 2
CPU Cooling: Zalman Ultra Quiet CNPS9500 LED 92mm CPU Cooler w/ Copper Base
Memory: 2GB Corsair XMS2-8500 DDR2-1066
Do you want us to overclock your CPU?: YES
Hard Drive One: Western Digital Raptor Enterprise 150GB 10K RPM 16MB Cache - SATA
Optical Drive One: 20X Dual Layer DVD±RW Drive w/ LightScribe Technology - black
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTS 640MB PCIe
Do you want us to overclock your GPU?: NO
Sound Card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi™ XtremeGamer
Network Card: Integrated Gigabit Network Card
Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition
Warranty: 1 Year Maingear Warranty

Not fancy, but should be cool.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions. :P

[Plan1x]

Hello rcb,

First, we want to apologize for not responding to your initial email. As stated in our forums in other threads, we have had problems with our email service all week and have not been getting many emails that have been sent to us, unfortunately. We are working on the problem but it has nothing to do with our tech-support being less then exceptional. Every email is always responded to and if it is not, then most likely we have not received it.

As per your question, windows Vista comes with a good program called Windows Defender. As for anything else we recommend 2007 Norton Anti Virus.

If you have any further questions and want quicker responses to your questions please call us at 888-MAINGEAR.


Best Regards,
MAINGEAR Support
888-MAINGEAR

[whorton5]

I have sent two e-mails and I know Plan1x was planning to forward this question to whomever's building my machine, but wanted to ask the question in the public forum:

Do you all recommend a "dual boot" machine while the Vista crap is being worked out? Does that introduce problems later? Can a semi-newb like me easily correct things when I want to stick with just Vista? Respectfully,

[Plan1x]

hey Whorton5,

I'll just post this here. I was discussing the "Dual Boot" yesterday with management and was told that we do not do it.

[whorton5]

Well, I suppose I'll just trust the builder to make sure she's stable before she gets to me with Vista then. I assume the latest Vista drivers for the sound card, video, etc.. will be installed. I have gone to the Dell website and found the ones for my monitor. My keyboard and mouse (both Razer) don't appear to have Vista drivers yet...I guess I just plug them into USB and wait. :?

[rcb]

Hello rcb,

First, we want to apologize for not responding to your initial email. As stated in our forums in other threads, we have had problems with our email service all week and have not been getting many emails that have been sent to us, unfortunately. We are working on the problem but it has nothing to do with our tech-support being less then exceptional. Every email is always responded to and if it is not, then most likely we have not received it.

As per your question, windows Vista comes with a good program called Windows Defender. As for anything else we recommend 2007 Norton Anti Virus.

If you have any further questions and want quicker responses to your questions please call us at 888-MAINGEAR.


Best Regards,
MAINGEAR Support
888-MAINGEAR

Thanks for your quick response; I know email is not perfect, but I didn't know you were having problems.

As to your reply, I'll be running Windows XP on my F131, not Vista. So, should I be running something like AdAware in addition, or is Norton anit-virus enough? I've got the full 2007 version, but OEM.

[carsonmd]

I run AVG anti-virus. I find it to be better than Norton.

[Plan1x]

i agree....I have avg on mine and adware

[RottynDawg]

Welcome to the boards rcb!

[Bruman]

I just got my new Vista Machine, I see something called live one care on it which is good for 3 months. Is that the "Defender" program you were talking about or is there another specific program in Vista..

[RottynDawg]

Windows Live OneCare is a complete package which includes antivirus, antispyware (via Defender), improved software firewall, backup schedules, and tune-up schedules which includes disk defrag, disk clean-up, etc... You don't have to pay the fee after the 90 days if all you want to use is Defender.

Hope that helps :)

[crazybithead]

and by no means am I an expert, but the microsoft one care has been found to have some troubles. Here is an article I read a little bit ago

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6156733.html

Hope this helps

[XBarbarian]

Regarding anti virus. I support McAfee at work, and it sucks. I have supported Norton at previous Enterprises. it sucks. Personally, I used to use AVG because it was free, and I had used successfully to remove virus on friend's machines, that the other couldn't get, but, AVG has become a resource hog. I used the McAfee on the Maingear at first, because I can use it free with my corporate license ( Authorized too )

However, on my maingear, the McAfee became weird, locking in scan on some files, locking up, just a real PITA. I ganked it.

The Absolute BEST AV App in the world currently is NOD32. They win every competition of AV products. fast scan, low footprint, The Absolute best and fastest at detecting new virus, long before the other majors can release a .dat file for them. SO, even though I have free AV, I pd the 39$ for NOD32.

And All I can say is it really is awesome. Low resource use, FAST scans, auto updates, etc. I couldn't be happier.

[crazybithead]

ok trying out nod32, after doing a little research, what firewall do you team that up with

[XBarbarian]

well..Firewall.. I have a DLink DGL 4300 Router. That provides NAT which is a hardware firewall, which is superior to any software based firewall. On the clients on LAN, I also enable The built in XP sp2 Firewall, for additional security. Thats plenty for me. Running multiple software firewalls is bad voodoo.

I support Black Ice at work, and it sucks. If anything, the Zone Alarm product is fine if you prefer, but a router is still superior, as long as you do a few things, like change the frreaking password, etc..sooo many people don't. And if you use Wireless, enable MAC address filtering, etc. That is a must, or you will be providing free ISP services to any wanker passing by your place.

[solar]

For anti-virus I have been happy with the free version of AVG. For anti-spyware I do weekly/monthly scans with ad-aware and spybot S&D, plus I use windows defender.
Also some other handy utils is Winpatrol and Roboform.

For the firewall I also have the dlink dgl-4300 but I also use zonealarm mainly for the purpose of knowing what is trying to use the internet and phone home.