Switching to Windows 64-bit

[JSLTIGER]

I'd second the vote for Avast. It's a good anti-virus program that you may want to consider. It's another freebie program, and it works very well. I've been using it for many years now with no problems. On top of everything else, it is very resource light, so you won't even notice that it's doing its job.

[Castout]

These days one needs on top of Anti virus a very robust firewall too.

[Arclight]

Meh, Windows firewall and Avast here, no trouble for over 3 years now. Before that I had Comodo firewall, and that period was the only time some virus slipped through. I've been behind a decent router since using only Win firewall though.

Best protection is still an educated user.

[antikristuseke]

Run spybot and NOD32 on my w7 64bit system, no problems so far

[frau kaleun]

Thanks for all the advice, guys.

[kiwi_2005]

Is this new machine to play Silent Hunter 5 Gawd I can't wait, I'm buying a new system in about a week from now already have it chosen have to wait for my 4 day holiday break as it will be couriered to me so need to be home for its wonderful arrival I will most likely give the courier driver a big hug! I already have Silent Hunter 5 and tried desperately to play it on the machine I have atm but it pretty much died trying. So its SH3 & 4 until the pc arrives.

Anyways...

Malwarebytes and Outpost firewall both free both excellent.

Malwarebytes catches what other anti-viruses miss . I got sucked in way back with that online scanner yes I should of known better. My antivirus at the time Avira didn't even protest. Once I knew I caught something nasty on the machine I installed Malwarebytes and on first scan it cleaned 4 trogans.

Top rated freeware anti-viruses
Avast
AVG
Avira - um yeah it missed some viruses.
Comodo
Malwarebytes

Best paid anti virus software
Esets Nod 32
Kaspersky
Endpoint Security Suite

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by kiwi_2005

Is this new machine to play Silent Hunter 5

Nope, it's not a new machine - just upgrading to Win7 so I can run 64-bit and take better advantage of the hardware and RAM I've already got on hand.

I'm not really interested in SH5 at the moment, I'll be more than happy if SH3 runs better, along with all the other programs I already use.

Gawd I can't wait, I'm buying a new system in about a week from now already have it chosen have to wait for my 4 day holiday break as it will be couriered to me so need to be home for its wonderful arrival I will most likely give the courier driver a big hug!

Lol, I go through the same thing - I always plan major changes/upgrades around some extra time off work so I have plenty of time to tinker and play.

[antikristuseke]

kiwi, all anti virus sfotware misses some stuff. Even with Nod32 and Kaspersky one finds what the other misses and vice versa. Know that from personal experience, but what promted me to move to nod from kaspersky was the vast difference of the resources used by those programs, kaspersky is a resource hog, but still an antivirus program I can reccomend with good concience.

[Tessa]

Originally Posted by Castout

In defense of Norton

The current Norton IS NOT the old Norton.

I'm using Norton Internet Security myself and it's good and it is light on the resources.

I used to be using Comodo Internet Security but these days their product is not as good as they used to be and I got the impression they have gotten lazy and complacent. Can't blame them though as theirs is a free product so you can't really complain.

Avira is good too I trust that app.

As for 64 bit software there are more things to protect in 64 bit OS. For example some exploits that wouldn't work in 32 bit system would pass a security app detection in 64 bit environment. It's things like these.
Some security app are not even designed for 64 bit environment and wouldn't work in it. Imo a 64 bit security app needs to be designed for 64 bit environment from the development process and not just simply ported.

I used to be unaware of this issue with regard to security apps in 64 bit environment. Needless to say there are now a lot more app that caters to 64 bit environment better [than Comodo Internet Security for 64 bit].

The general release version of Norton is slow and just a bad idea, like putting a deck gun onto a type XXI. The Endpoint Protection - their corporate AV software has always been light on the resources and excellent (can just be expensive depending on the licensing); an almost 180 of their consumer brand stuff. One nice point with SEP, the license is good forever.

For the free stuff it seems like it changes each month which is best, AVG Avira, and Avast have all passed my own personal tests (when testing software for the company) in catches purposely placed infected files. Avira (imo) worked the best since it did have realtime scanning (on the free version) and would indicate an infected file accessed on a remote drive when browsed to.

Funny you should mention Comodo, after their last series of changes I got the same impression, and ended up 86'ing and just leaving the Windows Firewall (with 2 Hardware Firewalls in place at home I've only managed to get a major infection once so far) and all the filtering to the real firewalls. Its really sad, there's a lot of free software out there that works as good or better than what you could pay $100's of bucks for. It's frustrating to watch the good free ones go from mediocre to great to awful, back to top notch and then slide back down to useless; rinse and repeat.

So far the only programs I've used that have really made use of the x64 architecture are Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator (CS5, 64bit versions). They're a lot faster for the work I do on them, and so far the only ones that I've been able to see a major increase in productivity so far based solely on its coding (and not just faster hardware).

If you have a lot of time and your hands to fiddle around with Privoxy is an excellent free ad/spam/malware filtering program. It isn't something you download and install and have running in 10 munutes though, to really get its full capabilities and functionality takes a long amount of time fine tuning each setting. The amount of variable that are configurable is scary, though once working I've found I have never needed to use an additional plug-in for Firefox to remove ads/deal with (flash) cookies or anything security related.

[frau kaleun]

Well I am back to XP after having tried for most of the last 24 hours to get Win7 up and running.

Actually, I had it up and running fine after the initial install - until I played with it a bit and then shut it down and tried to add a second internal hard drive to my system.

After doing that, 7 would not load except in safe mode. I shut it down again and removed the second drive, which didn't help. I tried completely reinstalling it - it went through the whole process but at some point during the final series of reboots it just hangs and I sit there looking at a black screen with a cursor in the middle and nothing happens until my system gives up and reboots itself.

So I reinstalled XP and did the "factory restore" thing that came with my rig when I got it and got it running fine again. Then I tried to install 7 again (and yes I know I have to do a custom install to switch to 64-bit) and I get the same problem, Win 7 will not finish installing.

So I shut it down again and disconnected and reconnected all the drives and got XP up and running again, with all drives recognized (altho I've deleted the partition on the second drive pending getting 7 running again) and all the original drivers working fine... tried to install 7 again, and got no joy.

Reinstalled XP and am searching online for some clue as to what I did that I shouldn't have, or didn't do that I should have... trying to figure out if there's something I need to have to run the additional drive with Win7.

My internal drives are SATA II, the motherboard has 5 ports for SATA drives, two of which have DVD drives attached leaving three (I thought) for other devices, so I didn't see where a second HDD would be a problem. I also have an external drive hooked up via e-SATA. When I boot up all the connected SATA/e-SATA drives are recognized, and I can access them all in XP - but something I'm doing or lacking is making it impossible to get 7 up and running with that configuration.

I don't know whether to pop the 7 disc back in and try one more time, or what. In the BIOS setup screen for SATA configuration it's got options something that lets you choose between SATA, RAID, and AHCI. It says I need a driver for AHCI, which I found at my PC support site... is that what I need?

HELP! I loved Win7 when I had it running the first time, it's so pretty and now I can't see it any more!

[Castout]

First you need to go to your BIOS. You may select between AHCI and others I think. I'd suggest choosing AHCI in BIOS and only then you install windows 7 on AHCI setting.

Problems could occur if you change the BIOS setting after installing windows 7. If you installed under AHCI BIOS setting it should stay as AHCI in BIOS after installation. I'm guessing you didn't install it in AHCI mode in BIOS and then changed the BIOS setting to AHCI after installing. Revert back or reinstall under AHCI setting.

And if I may suggest be very careful popping in and out especially if you do that often, the 7 disc they are prone to cracking. I suggest a different place to store them than their original box.


@Tessa, I'm done with Norton it's bad. And now I bit my own tongue and go back with COMODO.

I can get Kapersky or Avira Security Suite but somehow I'm contend enough with CIS having had bad experience with the damn Norton Internet Security. I've never had an infection with COMODO.

[Gerald]

Not always necessary to go into the BIOS, in case of emergency, perhaps, the software is usually correct to find a good path itself

[Castout]

It's either IDE or AHCI.

No if you installed the operating system under IDE you cannot later switch it in BIOS to AHCI and vice versa, absolutely not as far as I know.

I think Frau may have made that mistake.

[Gerald]

Possible, that is the case

[stoppro]

If you are tryingto upgrade from XP 32 to windows 7 64 bit.You are in for a ride.I tried and failed.I am not expert enough to do itbut I tried and got so frustrated I finally gave up-, kept it the way it was,using it for older games and instead built the machine i have now.vendor knows some of the problems I had. but now all is good.