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I’m often asked if free antivirus apps are as effective at protecting a Windows PC from virus infections as their “paid” counterparts.
And I must say, that’s an excellent question.
Back in the early days of home computing my answer would have been a huge NO because the free antivirus programs available at the time were indeed inferior to the commercial programs.
But that has changed over the years…
Question from Ramie: I downloaded a photo last night from one of the free photo websites that I use.
While I was retrieving the photo from the Downloads folder I noticed there was a file named setup.exe in there.
I haven’t downloaded a software program in well over a year so I don’t know how that file got in there.
Do you think it might be a virus?
Question from Oliver: I’ve been using Malwarebytes for several years with good results but it recently started causing my computer (Lenovo laptop with Windows 10) to freeze up.
I know it’s Malwarebytes that’s causing the freeze-ups because when I use Autoruns to prevent it from loading automatically with Windows the problem goes away.
I did some research and found out that Malwarebytes apparently doesn’t play well with certain computers running Windows 10, so I’d like to just remove it from my hard drive.
The problem is when I try to uninstall it I get an error saying it wasn’t successfully uninstalled.
Can you tell me what I need to do in order to completely remove Malwarebytes from my PC?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
I don’t usually subscribe to conspiracy theories, and the last thing I would ever want to do is create one.
That being said, I have often wondered to myself whether the antivirus software companies could be creating malware and spreading it over the Internet in order to perpetuate the demand for their products.
Question from Darryl: I have always understood Windows’ built-in “Microsoft Defender” antivirus app to be inferior to other antivirus programs.
But yesterday I heard that might no longer be the case.
What’s your opinion about Microsoft Defender?
Is it really just as good as the third-party antivirus programs that are being sold today?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]