MS antispyware, is it killing my machine speed?

I have a relatively new dell celeron based pc, (approx 8 months old) 256mb of memory with AVG free and Microsoft antispyware running, it is really starting to creak and run really slowly and i was wondering if it was the antispyware beta that was causing this problem?

I have to keep it virus and spyware free as it is the till to my shop so vital it stays clean and clear but it is really slowing down, sometimes to unusable levels.... any ideas as to the perfect combo for anti virus and anit spyware etc? whilst not killing the system its on....

p.s. i have a second machine with norton internet security 2005 would this be a better product to run?

cheers for any suggestions

Delarge

 

I use avast! Antivirus, and I don't have any anti-spyware programs running (I don't use Internet Explorer, I use Mozilla Firefox). Needless to say, I 've had maybe 3 pieces of spyware in the past year since using Firefox, and no viruses since getting avast!

 

i'm using Avast Antivirus in conjunction with Spyware Blaster (doesn't have to run in the background) and i use Adaware SE and Spybot S & D as scanners, also Sygate Personal Firewall.... completely spyware free and none of those programs bog down my machine...

 

Delarge how many programs do you have running on the PC when it boots up??? 256 MB of RAM isn't alot of memory these days, so if you have other unnecessary programs running when the computer boots up, this could be causing the slow down... what's in your START UP list?

and i'm not expert on Norton but as far as i know, their products are bloated and if anything it might make your slow down problems worse...

 

Halo: I see you listed Ad-Aware OR MS Anti-Spyware. I'm using both. Should I get rid of one of them?

 

Thanks for the reply. Sounds logical, unlike many things having to do with computers.

 

Thanks guys for all your helpful comments,

Anhedonic,
to be honest there isn't much loaded in the beginning, apart from the the adsl stuff and the bespoke till/shop software which is probably a bit clunky in its own right, i think that more memory is the first step here, as the conclusion seems to be that ms antispyware is pretty good...

btw when you say start up list, are you referring to the items in the 'startup' section in applications?

cheers once again...

Delarge

 

Try this program. It will tell you why your PC is running slowly. It shows you what program/programs is/are hogging your PC, in REAL TIME. Process Explorer 9.12

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4566