Apart from..........

[Barewolf]

Sticking XP in to repair is their anythin that can run a diagnostic on the software and hardware apart from ZASS?

[v0id]

Winternals

ZASS? Depends on the sort of diag you want. What's the prob?

[Barewolf]

Well all i can come up with thats reliable as anti spywhere and anti virus is ZASS. I had someone who had AVG on their system and it slowed it down and they had explorer crashes on XP with IE7. I removed the toolbars and AVG and put ZASS on and ran a scan and it picked up 26 Spyware, Its working now but i just wanted to know if there was an easier way than having to go through that procedure all the time.

Basically i want a diagnostic tool to tell me whats wrong before i have to "Guess" that its the problem.

[Paul]

I've run AVG here for years without a slow down, if your mate has spyware all over the PC then I would expect that to be the reason and not AVG. AVG or A N Other anti-virus tool plus a decent anti-spyware tool would be a pure minimum that I would use to safeguard a PC. Sometimes all in one tools don't do the job as well as 2 seperate tools made specifically for the task.

[Jon T]

I know the name sounds corny, but as an anti-spyware-malware solution, SuperAntiSpyware is good.

And to secound what Paul siad, i've installed AVG on systems for years without them slowing down.

[Paul]

If an install corrupts or clashes with another tool then you MAY see a slow down but it won't be the tool itself to blame. Since it's XP I take it you have run several thorough spyware, adware, trojan and virus scans and also tried system restore. A repair install isn't that much of a hardship and doesn't take long to complete.

You need proactive measures to stop it happening in the first place....

The first two should be part of everyones armoury
Spywareblaster: http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/index.html
Spybot: http://www.proxomitron.info/ enable advanced mode, turn all the options on and enable teatimer. Note, this will cause a few action windows requesting your input.

AV.... I recommend Eset Nod32.

Firewall.... I use Agnitum Outpost. It has plugins for Malware filtering, ads, attack detection etc. It has one major fault that only applies in certain circumstances, but I can't be swayed from It's "active content filtering" plugin. So far it appears unique, but what it does is allow you control over what is accepted, on a site by site basis. Superb
Again, causes major interaction until your settings are known.
Of note, is that this adds an extra to IE to give drag and drop control over popups and stuff.

More?

IEspyad: http://www.spywarewarrior.com/uiuc/resource.htm Sadly now getting out of date, but a marvelous addition nonetheless.

Hosts file. http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm
Another layer is allways welcome, right?

Proxomitron: http://www.proxomitron.info/
An on board web filtering proxy. Stop javascript, spoof your OS, choose alternate proxies, browser etc. Indespensible!

The real culprit..
Set your IE settings appropriately:
In control panel/IE applet/security settings:
Automatic prompting for activeX controls. Click enable, or the blighters download without asking.
Automatic prompting for file downloads. Enable
Software channel permissions. High safety.
Allow paste operations via script. Unless you want certain sites to copy your clipboard... Disable. (can you believe allow is the default!!)
The rest you can leave as is, or prompt, though you will get prompts.

Go back to the applet pick "advanced".
A couple of things.
Any "install on demand boxes should be unticked.
"Do not save encrypted pages to disk" A privacy issue. ticked.
If your browser doesn't do it, tick the "empty temporary internet files folder blah blah" option

I use all the above.

Finally, the browser. Your choice. IE is a perfectly capable browser, but it lacks the control other browsers have.

Phew! If that doesn't help you, disconnect from the net.

[Barewolf]

Personally i use Zone Alarm Pro Security Suite, It seems to handle everything effectively. The problem with the issue was that the system was a 2.27gz processor with 256mb of RAM. That wasnt helping much, i would have thought Dell would have shipped a PC out of more than 256mb of Ram for the processor.

Anyway the spyware was only one issue, IE was crashig due to Toolbars from yahoo and google that were installed.

But like i said....I dont really want to be going through all the ins and outs to find the actual cause.

My method is usually if its internet explorer with a problem then......

1) Check for Toolbars, if installed remove them
2) Scan for spyware and viruses using ZASS
3) if negative repair IE from add / remove
4) If that fails cry

But thats just IE issues, i was wondering about other issues that may crop up, a program that would scan the system for errors.

Originally Posted by Barewolf

But thats just IE issues

Well no, it isn't.

You can't really prevent errors that you can't foresee, but you can try the one click fixers, or the "anti-crash" tools.
Other than that, you've lost me.

[handyman]

Avg at home with spybot s&D, running adaware everynow and then as a back up. We run avg over the work network and have zero slow down. However we do have a commercial firewall etc.

I use a properly configured hardware firewall which means I have to have less software running on my pc.

As for getting a tool to tell you stuff. Get some experience fixing things yourself without having to depend on numpty pc doctor type software.

[Gareth]

Originally Posted by Barewolf

Sticking XP in to repair is their anythin that can run a diagnostic on the software and hardware apart from ZASS?

What on earth is ZASS?

Wikipedia tells me it's him

[Barewolf]

Zone Alarm Security Suite