Posted April 29, 201014 yr You should have a real time Anti-virus program to catch the low lying fruit. I would uninstall McAffee and install Microsoft Security Essentials, which is free. Your computer will then revert to the Windows firewall. AVG is also still a reasonably good free antivirus program. I believe MSE replaces Windows Defender. Third party firewalls are overkill for almost all users and often interfere with ordinary web surfing and p2p network setup. The Windows Firewall and the hardware firewall in your router are enough. I find Malwarebytes, which is also free, to be the best tool for initially scanning and removing suspected malware. None of these programs is perfect, particularly if you like to download free programs from Eastern European websites, serial number crackers and porn. Microsoft constantly updates the "Malicious Software Removal Tool" but it does not seem to do anything useful. There is nothing in your current setup preventing you from downloading Windows updates. If Windows Update wants to download patches for your free trial of Office 2007 I would not bother with them if you do not plan to buy that program. The processor on your laptop is fairly slow and I would try to avoid burdening it with too many programs that want to load at startup. "Slow" does not mean "bad": it just is what it is compared to other CPUs. AMD CPUs tend to have a higher price/performance ratio than Intel processors.
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