Granny's list of potentially helpful Windows applications!

[cake]

Win. Defender and common sense is all you need 

[Lucy]

Win. Defender and common sense is all you need 

Seconded, although the occasional scan/sweep doesn't hurt. But indeed, common sense does a lot for your PC's security

Edit:

Nice set of apps there btw Granny, forgot all about CCleaner. Downloading and running it ASAP!

[cake]

loes' sig getting better each day

[Deer_Hunter]

My favorite windows tool (of all time) is Windirstat. Its fantastic for figuring out where all your disk space went.

This is pretty cool!

[George]

Guys, just pay for Antivirus, seriously. Especially if you don't have a solid backup strategy. The free ones are all shitty compared to the 'premium' options. Just see any test done by av comparatives. Its like $50 a year. Stay away from McAfee. I've used F-Secure and Bitdefender in the past together wil regular scans by TrendMicro's free HouseCall.
Also: http://news.softpedia.com/news/avg-proud...2146.shtml

I have a mac and run Bitdefender's and Malwarebytes scanner once a week for peace of heart.

My favorite windows tool (of all time) is Windirstat. Its fantastic for figuring out where all your disk space went.

Wow that's really neat! I only have a trouser-troubling 60GB SSD, although surprisingly used, only 23GB. I don't store much as you can tell

[Rooney]

...Stay away from McAfee...

Definitely agreed.
McAfee is just shit. Don't get why i have it on my computer when it's just "eating" my memory. It's completely worthless and in my opinion unreasonably used, misses alot of functions that one AV should have. Whenever it appears on my desktop as some kind of " unneccessary, free cleaning advertisement", i feel like smashing everything in my sight, xd.


Edit by Granny: Fixed bbcode formatting (message was inside quote)

[George]

Well, I'm going to be avoiding CCleaner for the foreseeable future

Around 2 weeks ago, I ran it after a month or two of not using it ("Cleaner" + "Registry") and it turned my OS to toast. I kept on getting an error pop-up (OXC0000022) when trying to launch any applications, regardless of what they were -- even stock software such as Notepad or Command Prompt. After much trial and error, I had to OS reload (it even bricked up safemode). No big deal, Windows 10 makes that easy thankfully.

Tried out CCleaner again tonight (just Cleaner, no Registry) and guess what -- same problem. The cleaning process is clearly removing something it shouldn't be which is wrecking my OS. Just finished yet another OS reload...

It's by no means an essential applications, I can live without it. Oh well.

[Rooney]

Never happened to me so far, and i installed it only for "junk cleaning" purposes. You may have marked (like a little box or maybe signed an agreement) that wasn't suggested in the first place, or you didn't specify what you wanted to be completely deleted from you computer? ;o   

[cake]

Never happend to me before either

[George]

Never happend to me before either

I can't find any other reports, either. Very strange, but it's definitely being caused by something that CCleaner is removing based on my testing so far. Saving a gigabyte or two isn't worth it if an OS reload is required. Problem solved I guess.