Anti-virus Software?

[Xavier Onassiss]

Bitdefender has made my desktop pretty much impossible to use. I have not-so-old (new in 2018) Win7 machine and I've got MalWareBytes running now. I had MWB running simultaneously with Bitdefender, but the latter recently decided the entire internet is a security threat, refusing to load pages, slowing down my browser to the point of uselessness. I had to deactivate it.

 

I've got no issues with MalWareBytes, but I usually keep a couple of anti-malware systems running at once if at all possible. Is there anything else I should install? Recommendations from the Hero Forum would be welcome.

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

My main two recommendations would be:

Install a really good adblocker on your web browser, and block all ads.  Yes, even on sites you want to support. 

If you don't mind the minor annoyance of getting web pages back working, install noscript or a similar addon, and block javascript on every page you don't trust. 

[Xavier Onassiss]

I'm retiring my computer.

Or not.

 

Just like that, everything's fine now.

I hate computers.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Monkeying around with stuff way above my pay grade and I think I found the problem. Our ISP has upgraded to 5G, and apparently we now have a 5G network connection on our router? (I didn't know this was a thing.) Exact same name as the old wireless network with "-5G" after it. So I connected to that one instead of our old wi-fi, and now the issues I was having are gone. Also, I have six times the connection speed.

 

Still have no idea why I couldn't connect with the old network, but here I am.

 

I'm in shipping and receiving, drat it!

 

And about two minutes after I wrote the above, my browser stopped working, AGAIN. So I haven't fixed anything, really. No idea what's going on here. My browser stops working after an hour or three, I reboot the computer, it works okay again. It stops working. Repeat.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Does anyone know anything about TLS handshake errors? I think it might be a problem with corrupted data in my browser profile, so I created a new profile. For the moment it seems to have helped.

 

We'll see what happens. I suck at this.

[Ternaugh]

5 hours ago, Xavier Onassiss said:

Does anyone know anything about TLS handshake errors? I think it might be a problem with corrupted data in my browser profile, so I created a new profile. For the moment it seems to have helped.

 

We'll see what happens. I suck at this.

 

Verify that your system's time is synchronized with the time server. A clock that's widely off will cause the TLS handshake to fail.

[RPMiller]

I agree with the suggestions above. Also note that depending on the version of Windows and the servers you are using, TLS may not even be enabled. Some systems I come across on a weekly basis still have SSL 1.0 enabled. smh Also, you may want to look at Vipre (not a typo) as a replacement AV. It is much lighter on the system and has an incredible customer service, engineering, and product features. I have it on my home PCs. At my last job, we used it enterprise wide, and they even gave us a free home license for every user! (I'm sure it was bundled into our licensing). Finally, if you are running Java, remove all versions you have, and if you need it (such as for HD), then install only the latest version and keep it updated. Finally, you really don't want to run more than one AV on your system at a time. There is a lot of potential there for process threading problems if they fight over the same files to scan it. So stick with just one. 

 

Also, what browser are you using? 

[Xavier Onassiss]

Thanks to all for the suggestions. I've been through the above steps regarding the system time and TLS vs. SSL. No luck there.

 

I've got my backup machine (a Windows 10 laptop) fully updated and working properly now. With Windows 7 no longer supported, I think it's probably safest to retire it and move on. Sooner or later I have to learn to use Win10, like it or not.

[Pattern Ghost]

Here's what I do on a fresh install:

 

1. Run the thing that comes with Windows, whatever they're calling it this week.

2. Run the paid version of Malwarebytes.

3. Install Ublock Origin adblocking extension on all the browsers.

The Windows built in AV does a good job at blocking viruses, though not so good a job at cleaning them. Malwarebytes will prevent you from even loading suspect sites and stop other Malware. The two don't conflict. Most off the shelf AV packages also have malware protection running, and those might conflict with MWB. Ublock Origin does a good job at blocking ads of all kinds. You can also use the element zapper to get rid of embedded ads or animated images, or other screen elements you don't like (say, fixed headers, hate those, don't know why they're a fad again). You can also use it to block javascript on a site.

 

I've been using this scheme for a very long while now, over a decade, and I haven't had any problems.

[Pattern Ghost]

Almost forgot: I started using a VPN recently. This adds some additional security. Plus, I can watch region-locked TV shows on the web.