lawp

djwayne
I don't thing MSE works that good, so I bought the Pro version of Avast. I haven't had any problems since.

interested to know what problems you had?

I did a fresh install of Windows 7 because I had a virus I couldn't get rid of. After the fresh install, I put MSE on and within two days my computer was re-infected with the same virus problems. So I re-installed W7 again and this time put the the free version of Avast on. It worked really well but I wanted better protection so I bought the pro version. I haven't had any virus problems since. Avast seems to work well with X3 too, no problems to report.
 
I'm also using the paid version of MalwareBytes....the combination of the two are working well.  
 
Another thing I did to improve my computer's performance was to ditch Internet Explorer for Google's Chrome. The difference is dramatic. Night and day. 

Thanks for the info! :-)

Some of the problems I was having was Explorer would crash often, browser would get re-directed, I couldn't search using Google Bar, Explorer's search wouldn't work right, Windows wouldn't start right...One problem after the next....after installing Avast and MalwareBytes and Chrome, all these problems went away for good. Now my computer is running rock solid, and rated at about a 10 on the Microsoft reliability graph. 

As long as you configure your antivirus appropriately it should not be intrusive whatsoever (unless you have a turkey of an antivirus product or your machine is far too slow, if you have a quad core or above it should not be a problem). Microsoft recommends you exclude certain folders and files from realtime antivirus scan (BTW this does not just apply to 'enterprise' environments)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822158

I also exclude the cakewalk folders. You can see what else is going on using

http://technet.microsoft..../sysinternals/bb896645

BTW it's not a good idea to use two or more scanners that will slow down your machine and virus scanners can conflict with each other.

I'm on a strict diet of facebook, espn, amazon, and yahoo email. 
 
And you think those are free of malware? Yahoo is possibly the only e mail I have ever had hijacked. Huge issues with the security at Yahoo. I store nothing there in any folders, no address book etc. I only use it when I need a log in address for sites that send junk mail. 
 
I have also used nothing but MS security for a long time now. A few IT people recommended it to me. I have never had a virus since. I toggle it off on my DAW as if your not on the net there is no reason for it. But I turn it back on when I have to put it on line. 

bvideo
 
Google itself delivers links to malware.

google is malware IMHO.