Antivirus Question

I have removed Avast Antivirus and am wondering if I need anything else for antivirus. I have Malware Bytes and whatever OS 10 provides. Do I need another one?

Thanks in advance.....

 

The answer is going to be subjective. Ask yourself, how many times and when was the last time your antivirus caught malware and stopped them dead in their tracks? My own experience of using Windows for decades now... a very small handful of times, all many years ago! Since Win 7, I've just relied on Window's built-in antimalware - plus monthly manual scans using Malwarebytes. A few PUP's aside that I whitelisted, the pair has never found anything! YMMV.

Since Win 10 a few years ago, I've relied solely on Windows. A good "layered defence" for an individual user is to (1) keep OS and apps updated, (2) sign in as 'standard' user (not admin), and (3) be mindful of clicking email links. Optionally, you can also turn on Window's own ransomware protection for yet another data protection layer.

 

Zebra Last's advice is good.

Windows Defender, free and included with Win10, is excellent protection. Most users don't need anything further, provided that they are careful, keep everything updated and aren't downloading from questionable sources (file that under "careful"). You can go into Windows Security to enable some more options to make Defender's protection better, but out-of-the-box it is excellent.

 

I had trouble with my computer taking a long time to shutdown and a long time to reboot. Someone said that Avast is the culprit. So I removed Avast and the computer does respond better both on shutdown and reboot. I just wondered if Avast or any 3rd party Antivirus was needed when Windows 10 comes with the defender built in.

Thanks much for the reply.....

 

Good to know that removing Avast improved your computer's performance. You should also look into what apps start running automatically upon bootup, and do you need them?

 

Yet another reason why i don't use so called anti-virus software.All of these so called "Anti-virus " scanners anymore are considered bloatware now.They tend to suck up resources like you're cpu and ram for no reason even at idle.I refuse to use them.And have not run into any virus's for some time.I even disable the Microsoft real time protection for this reason.I am saying not to do this but it will increase you're systems performance.

I only scan when needed using malwarebytes.95% of the time it will find nothing.

 

I will do that and see if I can streamline that....

Thanks much

 

Quick question..... how do I stop any items from loading at startup?

 

Microsoft Autoruns is a free app, portable version is available. It lets you manage Startup (Logon) tasks, can disable those you don’t want to run automatically. Good article on use: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/manage-windows-startup-programs-autoruns/