Six Programs To Help Keep Your Computer Safe And Secure

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Here are six programs to help keep your Windows XP or Windows Vista PC free from spyware, viruses, and intruders. All these programs are free, which is a good thing. However, I encourage you to purchase any of them that you find helpful for your computer in the long term.

Some of the paid for versions of these programs might help you consolidate these tasks. For instance, if you buy a firewall software package, you might get anti-virus and anti-spyware software with that firewall software. If you buy an Anti-Virus software package you might get all the other services with it – firewall, anti-spyware and other services that will keep your computer safe and secure.

This would reduce having to run seperate programs and save you time in keeping your computer safe and secure. But for this article, I’m presenting six software programs that I run to help keep all my Windows XP and Windows Vista computers safe and secure.

Anti-Spyware Software

Here are four Anti-Virus programs I run on my PCs. Some folks might consider this overkill but I will most likely continue to tweak this schedule since I’ve kept all my computers spyware and virus free for a long time now. Here is the list with my schedule.

1. Ad-Aware 2007 – I update and run a full system scan on the last Sunday of every month.
2. Spybot Search & Destroy – I update and run this after Ad-Aware on the last Sunday of every month.
3. SpywareBlaster – I update this after Spybot Search & Destroy on the last Sunday of every month.
4. Windows Defender – This runs a Quick Scan automagically at 2:00am every night. Full scan on the last Sunday of every month.

The fourth program, Windows Defender, I ‘ll mention briefly since I’ve written about the others on this blog but not Windows Defender. Windows Defender is Anti-Spyware software that you can download from Microsoft here.

Windows Defender is a free program that helps protect your computer against pop-ups, slow performance, and security threats caused by spyware and other unwanted software. It features Real-Time Protection, a monitoring system that recommends actions against spyware when it’s detected and minimizes interruptions and helps you stay productive. Now with 2 free support incidents for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

Windows Defender is a spyware detection program that allows you to set a schedule to scan your PC for spyware or manually start a scan yourself. There are two types of scans it will do – Quick Scan or Full Scan. I run a Quick Scan every night, automatically at 2:00am.

I run a full scan the last Sunday of every month after all the other programs mentioned above run. Windows Defender gets its spyware updates from Microsoft and automatically updates itself.

Anti-Virus Software

For the fifth software program, I run AVG Anti-Virus Software on my computers. You can read more about AVG at my blog post Protecting Your PC With AVG Anti-Virus Software. You can download AVG here.

So here’s the final daily schedule:

1:00am – AVG virus scan runs

2:00am – Windows Defender runs a Quick Scan

3:00am – My PCs shut down automagically. Read about it here.

Last Sunday of Every Month:

1. Ad-Aware Full Scan
2. Spybot Search & Destroy
3. SpywareBlaster Update
4. Windows Defender Full Scan

Firewall Software

For the sixth and final software program, I run ZoneAlarm, the free version. You can download ZoneAlarm here.

All the above programs can be downloaded from their individual websites, however one website you might not know about that has a bunch of software to help manage your computer is Major Geeks. Major Geeks is a website that’s been around for quite some time and contains a bunch of programs to help manage your PC. All the the above programs can be downloaded at Major Geeks.