Minimal Firewall/anti-spyware

Here is my question/dilemma. I have a pretty old, slowish notebook PC with only 512MB of RAM. I have over time added the free programs of Avast antivirus, Comodo Firewall, and Ad-aware antispyware as necessary security protections. These, of course, make the device even slower. I also have a wireless router that has all its security enabled between me and the cold internet.

All the overhead makes this monster unpleasantly slow to use at times. I get a LOT of time when the CPU is 100% busy. In my endless search for the minimum I can run and remain secure, I am considering unloading the Comodo firewall and Ad-aware, then enabling Windows internal firewall, and adding the keylogger/privacy software SnoopFree. It has a very small footprint, but as far as I can tell it catches a lot of bad things.

Can I get opinions form some security wizards about whether the combo of the router firewall, Windows firewall, and Snoopfree equal the full blown Comodo & Ad-aware software?

Thanks a Heap.

 

Well, the one thing about the setup you have in mind, is that you won't have outbound protection in the case that you DO get a spyware infection.

Before you conclude that your security apps are the cause of your slowdown (as I think you should be able to run those fairly quicly with the amount of RAM you have - I've managed to get XP running tolerably with a similar suite on 192MB of RAM), perhaps you should consider managing startup programs??? Could be you have OTHER programs running, tying up memory and CPU cycles unnecessarily, and we can eliminate those.

If you are interested, there are instructions at this link

 

Hmmm. I already run CCleaner periodically and also Abexo registry cleaner. I have already disabled all the graphics bells & whistles and am running the plain vanilla GUI. I use TUT to see what all is running and what memory and CPU time they are hogging. I will take a look at the other things that are running. I know the disk is slow in this old Toshiba notebook. Maybe I can play with the swap file.

Thanks for the quick help.

 

It certainly isn't the amount of Ram, its other issues.

 

We may be able to help with the 100% CPU usage problem as well, but we will need more details. Primarily, the process name responsible, and what you are doing when it happens. (if there is a noticeable pattern to this issue)