Northerner

Hello cc1. A minor point, but I thought "dragging it to the trash bin" was effectively the same as right-clicking the installer icon and selecting "delete". This sends it to the trash bin and I assumed this process only got rid of the icon and not the installer itself. Am I wrong here?

Avast appears to be working fine at present. Andavari, I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "an always on broadband connection". Lastly, is it necessary to uninstall the Avast installer? If it is what is the correct method here as the installer does not appear in add/remove programmes? One can delete it from the desktop but this probably just gets rid of the icon.

I am sure everything is clear now and thanks to those who replied to my posts. I don't need to uninstall CCleaner. I was simply using it as an example to show I did not have a problem downloading Avast or CCleaner. It was just that I wasn't totally sure about the process for downloading the Avast installer only.

A couple of questions! Can I go through the process of uninstalling McAfee offline? Secondly, as an example, if, for some reason, I had to temporarily uninstall CCleaner I would be able, later, to go to filehippo and reinstall it without a problem. However, I'm not sure I understand how to download the Avast installer as opposed to installing Avast itself-if that makes sense? Andavari, based on what I have read on this forum, I did think of Panda or MSE as alternatives to Avast.

Again, thanks for the information. I should be able to manage now.

At the risk of coming across as an idiot do you simply mean I can download Avast to my desktop before I run the McAfee removal tool. In other words is there a difference between downloading the Avast installer, and downloading Avast, to my desktop?

Thanks for the reply! So I am not correct in assuming McAfee will be removed, automatically, when my yearly subscription runs out in less than a week?

McAfee Internet Security was on my Dell PC when I bought it. I think it was free for a year! After that I did pay for a couple of years, but now I have decided to replace it, when it runs out, with freeware. I intend to download Avast Anti-Virus and combine it with the Windows Firewall which has been turned off because I had the McAfee firewall. I also have Spybot and Malwarebytes' on my PC. Are my defences adequate or can anyone suggest changes or additions?

Is it my imagination but what has happened to the the new forum design? The first time I saw the new layout it looked really attractive but it seems to have changed and become much "duller".

I have McAfee Internet Security. I know it is not particularly popular,on this forum,but it came free with my Dell PC and I kept it on. I intend to change to MSE or Avast soon. However McAfee was on my PC long before SAS began to take a much greater time to perform a scan so I can't see how it could have, in any way, caused the increase in SAS scan time. Thanks for the replies!

I use CCleaner all the time so there are never any temporary internet files for the scanner to get through. I use SAS regularly and my operating system is Windows XP. I am sure SAS was updated fairly recently. The "quick scan" now takes slightly longer, than before, but scans the same number of file items on my PC. The number given for file items scanned by the "full scan" has increased steadily over the past couple of weeks, and now the figure is around 3 times what it was in the recent past. This past figure stayed pretty constant since I downloaded SAS ages ago. Maybe that is the reason for the time increase but 3 hours plus would seem to be an inordinate amount of time! I am going to leave the issue for a few days and may get back to you. Lastly, Malwarebytes and Spybot do not take any longer to scan and do not show any "nasties".

Hope I am posting in the right sub forum! I have a look at this forum regularly altho' most of the stuff is over my head. Can anyone give a possible reason why the last time I did a full scan with Super Anti Spyware,on my Dell PC with XP, it took over 3 hours to complete. The time needed used to be around 55 minutes but that has been steadily increasing over the past 2 to 3 weeks. Also (I don't know if I am using the correct terminology) is there any "evidence" that Super Anti Spyware is more likely to produce false positives than,for example, Malwarebytes. I downloaded both based on information from this forum as I get the impression there a number of posters here who know a great deal about computers.

Also any comments on my choice of antivirus and firewall to replace McAfee. I will probably go for Avast and the Windows Firewall.

I have McAfee Internet security and I have to renew my subscription next month. I plan to replace it with Avast or Avira Antivirus and use the Windows Firewall which,at the moment is switched off. I also have Spybot,SuperAntiSpyware,and Malwarebytes' Antimalware on my Dell PC. Given that my knowledge, of computers, is pretty basic am I likely to have any problems deleting McAfee and do I need the McAfee removal tool for this process? I assume there is one! Any advice (tips) gratefully received.

What a shame!

I have downloaded Mozilla Firefox, but want to keep Internet Explorer as my default browser. I went into You Tube, using Mozilla Firefox, tried to play a video, and was told I had to download the Adobe Flash Player plug-in. When I look at "Add/Remove Programmes" it states I have Adobe Flash Player 10 ActiveX. I can access You Tube videos with Internet Explorer, but would like to be able to use Mozilla Firefox as well. Can I simply download the Adobe Flash player plug-in again, to achieve this, even though I already appear to have it? I assume the Flash player plug-in is the same thing as Flash Player 10 ActiveX.

Thanks for the replies/information.

I use Internet Explorer, as my web browser, and was planning to download another (probably Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome) browser. Would using different browsers at different times, to access the net, cause any problem or conflict on my PC?

Hope this is the correct forum/sub forum. I have a annoying minor glitch when I turn off my Dell PC (Windows XP). If the computer is switched off after a relatively short period ( say 1 hour) everything is almost always fine. If it is switched off after a longer period I normally get a message, in a box, saying:- "Super Anti Spyware Program not Responding End Now-----------------Cancel". Less often I get the same type of message:- "McciAsyncEventMgrWnd Program not Responding End Now-----------------Cancel". Usually I wait for around a minute and the PC switches off or I press "Cancel" and the machine switches off but, as before, takes longer than usual to do this. I realise this is only a very minor problem but can anyone help?

I enjoy looking at the CCleaner forum altho' many of the posts are way over my head. If I type "quotes" into Google the first page that comes up is called "The Quotations Page" and there is a tracking cookie associated with this site. I know these tracking cookies are relatively harmless and I normally get rid of this one using CCleaner. Based on information from the CCleaner website forum I downloaded the free editions of "Super Anti Spyware" and "Malwarebytes". I notice that "Spybot" and "Super Anti Spyware" spot the presence of the above tracking cookie whereas "Malwarebytes" and "Windows Defender" do not. Does this say anything about the relative merits of these programmes (if that is the correct word) against spyware? Lastly is there an optimum number of programmes, such as "Spybot", to have on a PC? In other words if one has too many do they conflict with each other?