Replacing Norton Systemworks

[anubis81]

Ok all, so in my attempt to replace the resource hog that is Norton Systemworks I've made a few choices. For antivirus I absolutely love NOD32 so far. Clean, easy, constantly updated and resource friendly. For defrag purposes I'm still deciding between Diskeeper and Perfect Disk. Each has certain aspects that I like. Any reasons to go either way?

My trouble is coming in the form of replacing WinDoctor and the other Diagnostic utilities. Mainly for registry cleaning scanning and problem finding and fixing. Any suggestions there? I'm trying out System Mechanic right now, not too horrible so far, but not perfect. I'm more than willing to go with multiple programs to accomplish my goal as long as they do their respective jobs in the best possible way.

Thanks in advance,

David

 

[Dan DeVille]

Why do you wanna replace Norton SystemWorks? I was planning on getting it myself.

 

[anubis81]

Mainly I'd prefer to get rid of the performance drag and pick up a few "cleaner/leaner" apps. The antivirus is decent but certainly not the best on the block. (i.e. With NAV I might get an update once a week, whereas with NOD32 there are days where the definitions are updated a couple times with new threats being caught.) The firewall is trumped by ZoneAlarm pretty easily (at least in my opinion). Speed disk is a bit slow and ineffecient for my taste. I usually had to run it multiple times to get the job done completely. As for the diagnostics, those I don't really have any feelings one way or the other for yet, probably because I use them so rarely. So if there isn't a good alternative to those utilities I'll just uninstall all but those and reap the performance benefit (I hope).

Really this might just be out of boredom and "striving against mainstream" but it keeps me busy, and it never hurts to look at other options. I've used Systemworks for going on 4 years now and it has done a decent job. I'm just trying to get the best there is now, just for kicks.

David

 

[talldude123]

i had systemworks 2003 and it screwed my system up badly. I have xp and it just froze it, gave it internet explorer error messages, so i ugraded to norton antivirus 2005. Don't know why you should get a new systemworks?

 

[Apokalipse]

well done, replacing Norton is one of the best things you can do for your computer

I use Antivir Personal Edition (www.free-av.com) which is very fast, and light on resources. when running, I've never noticed a performance drop, even on my 500MHZ machine

what people don't often know of is spyware.
spyware is software that downloads itself, can give you popup ads (even when you're not online), take up resources, and even spy on your activities
I use Ad-Aware SE (free) and Spy Sweeper ($30)
Spy Sweeper takes up a fair amount of resources, so I only run it periodically, but it does a really good job at removing spyware.
Ad-Aware SE is free, and does a good job too. though not as good as Spy Sweeper

for defrag and disk checking, I just use Windows' defrag program and scandisk/chkdsk (chkdsk for 2000 and above) as they do a descent job

 

[1badtech]

I recommend getting rid of Norton System works as well. It's doing too many things and it slows down your system. I'd get their anti-virus program, it's pretty good. You can get a decent registry cleaner that doesn't run all the time so it doesn't affect your system.

You can use the built-in defrag, if you don't mind waiting for it to finish before you can do anythin. Or you can get a third party defrag program that doesn't take a long time to run and can be scheduled to run automatically.