How much protection do we need?

Smack

Baseband Member
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So I started a full scan of my computer as advised in a different thread, and it just got me wondering as to how many different programs do we really need to protect our computers? I currently use MSE, and it appears to be working fine. I also just downloaded Malwarebyte and SpyBot to run a scan while I'm at it. I also found a program called Ad-Aware which also scans your Ram and Registry (I don't know if any of the other 3 programs do that).

So have I downloaded too much? Do I need the 2 programs I've downloaded so far and should I also download Ad-Aware?
 
You need as much as you think you need. I run MSE myself. I also run scans with SUPERantispyware and MBAM once a week. SUPER catches stuff cause it scans for different things than MSE and MBAM. MSE and MBAM rhave yet to find anything on my system. But I run them as a precaution.

Ad-Aware is junk. There is no reason to scan RAM, as if you turn off the system, the problem is gone. That is why RAM is Random Access, if you cut power to it anything that relied on it is gone. Scanning the Registry is a joke. All you have to do is read one of my many posts about the use of Registry Cleaners.

There is no way anyone can tell you what is enough or when it is too much. That is your personal preference.
 
Thanks for the post! I'll have a look through your previous posts about registry cleaners since I'm curious.

Other than that, is SUPERAntiSpyware the same or similar to Spybot Search & Destroy? From my, incredibly knowledgeable position, it seems that SuperAntiSpyware does a decent amount more than Spybot.
 
SUPER does the same thing as SpyBot but it does search for things that SpyBot doesnt. At the same time SpyBot will find things that SUPER doesnt. Since these programs are based on definitions they are only limited to finding what the definitions tell them to find. SUPER is great at finding Tracking Cookies and the likes, while SpyBot is great at finding Spyware, much like Tracking Cookies but with a much more malicious intent.

So there really is no harm in running both if you want to make sure your system doesnt have either, but neither is necessary.

As for Registry Cleaners, the thing is this. The Registry itself is nothing more than a text file. Lets say I install SUPER and it adds a line to my Registry at line 1024 of the Registry. Now that means there is 1023 lines before it that have information. Now when I click to run SUPER, the system knows to look on line 1024 of the Registry to find the relevant information.

Now lets say I run AdAware or CCleaner to clean my Registry. 2 things happen.

1. The cleaner will remove entries not active at that time. Which means that of the 1023 lines that proceed my SUPER entry I could have upwards of 200 entries that are not active. Meaning that my SUPER entry will now be found at 824 instead of 1024. Since those 200 entries were removed. The reason this is important is that people think that cleaning the Registry will give them a system boost, when in fact it can and will cause the system to have issues. More on an aspect of that to follow in point 2 but for now lets stick with this. The system knows that the entry is on line 1024, but since the cleaner removed entries it now has to look for the entry causing the system to actually take longer since it have to search over 800 entries to find the one relevant to the program I am trying to run. Granted this will only happen the first time you run a program after using a Registry Cleaner, but it doesnt negate the fact that the system actually has to work harder to find the entry needed the first time causing the opposite effect of what you want to happen.

2. To elaborate more on it is this aspect. If you read carefully you will see that I state entries that are not active. Meaning that if you are not running all of the programs you want to keep the Registry Entries for at the time of the cleaning, the cleaner could actually remove the entry for a program since it is not active at the time. Therefor when you go to run the program, the system gets bogged down cause it is continuously looking for something that was removed. Only to have it throw up an error in the end saying that the program now has to be reinstalled cause something is wrong.

Now with all of that said I must say this as well. The fact is there is very little evidence that a Registry Cleaner will boost a system's speed. With the advancements in such things as SuperFetch built into Windows since Vista, the amount of RAM system's come with now, and the pure processing power that machine have now, there is no need for such a tool anymore. A Registry is only a couple of KB big. It is after all a text file for the programs you have installed. Check your Remove Programs to see the total and you will be able to estimate how big your Registry file will be. Granted that doesnt take into account the number of programs you have installed previously or removed previously either. That is just your current total.

At the same time, it doesnt negate the fact that even if you did have a Registry that has a few thousand entries, that it is still only a few KB in size and that isnt going to harm your system speed in any way. With today's systems and the way things work, using such a tool is negated by what we have. Back in the days of Windows 95, Windows 98 and even Windows XP, such tools were a good thing to have. As the way the system worked was much different than it is now and PC's were no where near as powerful.

In the end if you choose to run it, go ahead. You dont have to take my word for it and it is evident even on our forums that people still suggest CCleaner and other tools to do such things. The chances that your Registry will become corrupt and lose a program install is slim, but it can happen. This is all just my 2 cents on the matter.
 
Wow, thank you for the detailed post. It's great to read stuff like that. Just to clarify, by curious I didn't mean I was planning on doing it after you suggested not to. I was just genuinely interested into the reasoning of why not. So thank you for the post. I actually did use CCleaner a while back on my old XP machine since it was recommended to me, though I can't recall if it did really help.

I'll go ahead and install SUPERAntiSpyware as well, just to cover all bases. I'd rather be safe than sorry.
 
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