Best program(s) for protection on Windows 10?

I have found Windows firewall to be more than adequate , i also have Kaspersky but just the AV not the IS , my parents use to get infected almost daily until i put Kaspersky on their computer , no issues in two years.

DTG1 said:

Windows Fairywall is not adequate, you would be surprised what wants access to the internet. WFWall allows anything with the right permissions written in the program, and its quite easy to script those permissions into virus's & trojans. The kicker is that WFWall does not inform you of that newly installed spyware/trojan program now has those permissions.

TinyWall and other a/v bundled software that have firewall like capabilities change how firewall exceptions are handled by denying everything until explicit permission to access your internet is given. To top that off, 3rd party firewall programs are much easier to manage and maintain than WFWall currently is, no 16-"hunder-ed"-zillion-digit names to decipher to know what program wants out.

All i know is that i have not been infected a single time in many many years using it and the people that i have discussed this with like Shane (owner of Tweaking .com and PC Wintech ) the guys at (Bleeping Computer) and (Chaslang) at Majorgeeks have all told me it's fine and apparently they didn't steer me wrong .

Your the first that has disagreed but everyone has a different opinion , what do you think about the guy who said he hasn't used any firewall or AV in years and no issues .

thunderclap said:

I've now tried Panda as an alternative to Norton and the same issue I reported earlier still happens: Chrome becomes unresponsive and takes 2-3 min to start, Windows Explorer constantly crashes, and sometimes Windows can't even shut down. If I uninstall it everything works fine. So that's three anti-virus programs that don't work for me: BitDefender, Norton Internet Security, and Panda Free. I guess I'll just still with Windows Defender.

It sounds like you're getting conflicts from left over parts of the uninstalled products. You should use the different companies' uninstall tools and probably do a registry cleanup after wards with at least CCleaner to be sure all invalid things are gone. A note on the Revo uninstaller program. I tried it and it doesn't do any better than just running the product's uninstall routine and then doing CCleaner's registry check.

People say that Bitdefender is one of the hardest to completely remove. Norton used to be but since 2007, it has done a very good job of completely removing itself without the aid of any special tools. It doesn't hurt to run them though.

People have said that using Defender along with Malwarebytes anti-exploit (a different product from the free or paid Malwarebytes Anti-Malware) works very well. Defender's biggest weak point is protection against new malware. Anti-exploit is strictly for that purpose and uses heuristic routines to check for suspicious behavior. It has no definition files at all and does not do real time scanning of files every time they are opened. What it does is shield only your browser where the great majority of new threats are encountered.

I've tried uninstalling BitDefender, then their removal tool, then CCleaner and I'm still seeing BitDefenders tag under Notifications. Not sure if that's a bug in Windows or if there is still some residual of BitDefender but I'm waiting to see what happens now.

thunderclap said:

I've tried uninstalling BitDefender, then their removal tool, then CCleaner and I'm still seeing BitDefenders tag under Notifications. Not sure if that's a bug in Windows or if there is still some residual of BitDefender but I'm waiting to see what happens now.

CCleaner does not do any deep cleaning of your registry, never has, never will. You need to get one that does more DEEP cleaning of registry files. I own CCleaner Pro. run it on two computers. But if you want something that will do deeper cleaning, you have a few choices. Glary Utilities is one, and their is a free version you can use. Ace Utilities is also good choice but only free for 30 days. I have all 3 myself. I bought two of those 3 long time ago, maybe 3 or more years now. Those are just some choices for you to consider.

OldMike65 said:

CCleaner does not do any deep cleaning of your registry, never has, never will. You need to get one that does more DEEP cleaning of registry files. I own CCleaner Pro. run it on two computers. But if you want something that will do deeper cleaning, you have a few choices. Glary Utilities is one, and their is a free version you can use. Ace Utilities is also good choice but only free for 30 days. I have all 3 myself. I bought two of those 3 long time ago, maybe 3 or more years now. Those are just some choices for you to consider.

That's very true and that's why I said "at least" use CCleaner. I use Auslogics Registry Cleaner for much more intensive cleaning. It digs much deeper and even on it's max settings, I have never had to restore any changes it made. The best part is that it's completely free. Just leave it on autobackup to be safe.

Dch48 said:

That's very true and that's why I said "at least" use CCleaner. I use Auslogics Registry Cleaner for much more intensive cleaning. It digs much deeper and even on it's max settings, I have never had to restore any changes it made. The best part is that it's completely free. Just leave it on autobackup to be safe.

Never tried Auslogics, but like we both know, their are quite a few different ones to choose from. Just got to find one ya like.