Firewall and antivirus software

If its anything like Norton you will get a screen that says its about to expire and at that point you can purchase 12 months of virus subscriptions if that is what you want.

The option is your's...register McAfee for a full year or uninstall it and install the A/V of your choice.  FWIW, my preference would be the latter.

My aplolgies...FWIW is "net-speak" for, "For What It's Worth".

pardon  my ignorance, but what's FWIW?

i'm thinking of getting a firewall and antivirus separate, since I've heard many problems with the internet security 2004. any advice? thanks again.

The last thing I would do is install a firewall by McAfee.  There are much better "free" firewalls such as Zone Alarm, Sygate Personal, and Outpost to name a few.  There are also better antivirus programs than McAfee or Norton.  NOD32 and Panda are two the I have found to be better than McAfee or Norton.  Many people swear by Norton but I doubt any that do have actually checked out NOD32 or Panda.  I have tried all of them and IMHO NOD32 beats them all (it is not even close).  You can download a 30 trial here and decide for yourself.

thanks guys,  appreciate the input.

since I still have a bout 60 days, I'll try different things, I was just concerned about installing for example a firewall by mcAfee and the Av by Norton, would that work? any potential problems?  thanks 

the more I read the more I get confussed, I wa reading the reviws for Norton and McAfee and they are both horrible. Anyone knows of a local retailer where I can find all types of brands to go look at? thanks 

Your best option is to ignore the local retailers and do some research on the internet.   Purchase on the internet as well.  There are many places you can read and do research.  For example you can visit my site here and read about anti-virus, firewalls, spyware, etc.  I have links to many other resources as well.  Check out virusbulletin here for a good independent review of antivirus programs.

Thanks Yellow, I was reading about firewalls and in one article it recommends not to use the internal firewall for xp and a firewall from a vendor at the same time.

is that true? what are the potential problems? i thought it would be safer.

I have an inspiron 5100, xp, McAfee firewall and I enabled the internal firewall for xp as well.

thanks and sorry for all the questions, I'm kind of new to the computer world and don't want to compromise the securoty on my computers.

Alejo

Firewalls and AV's - ryri (another delltalk regular) has written an article on both a copy of which is on my site - link below.

There is no need to use two firewalls at the same time.  If you have a commercial firewall installed and enabled, you should disable the windows xp firewall.  Since they are both doing the same thing, there is bound to be some interference.  McAfee has a reputation for poorly written code so I would not use another program that might intefere with it.

thanks for the info, I run a couple os test from symantec and dsl and at this time everything seems to be ok.

ok guys, I just run inot a problem, while running some test for my laptop, the firewall is perfect, couldn't find any open ports, run 3 different tests.

but when I run a virus test, the virus online scan I have detected it, yet the tests say that I'm unprotected for viruses attacks.

I have McAfee Firewall, Security center and Virus online scan.

is the last one not working? even on the security center it says that my protection is close to nothing, it also recommends to get antispam software. If I get a virus protection will interfere with what I have??

thanks again.  Alejo

Most of the AV's when testing for that, will tell you just that, even sometimes when you have THIER Anti-Virus package.

If you have a good AV (such as one listed in the AV section of my site - link below) and keep it uptodate you should have no problem with Virus.

Do you have any anti activeX software. These are 'malware' installed by bad websites that you can accidently visit and install without your knowlegde. Try the malware section of my site and look for spywareblaster and spywareguard. One sets kill bits to stop known activeX from installing, so does not run all the time. The other runs like your AV in the background and will stop known spyware attacks, including home page hijacks.