can you have two antivirus programs on the same computer?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Homer
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Homer

About a month back, when my trial version of Nortan
Antivirus 2004 was about to run out, my cousin installed
McAfee antivirus on it for me. My computer seemed to be
totally messed up by this. I could not connect to the
internet or do anything else without it freezing for
about 5-10 minutes (and this is a brand new vaio 3.2Ghz).
I called tech support and they told me this problem would
go away if i uninstalled one of the antivirus programs so
I did. It was fine then but now I want to install
Microsoft Antivirus Beta and can't help but think the
issue will repeat. Will I have to delete McAfee first in
order to install MAB and still have my computer work
properly?

I would really appreciate anyone's reply on this, thankyou
 
I'd go right ahead and try Microsoft Antispyware. I've seen very few posts
of incompatibilities here.

There are folks who run multiple antivirus application--it depends on the
specific applications how much of a problem this is.
 
Actually, you can only have 1 anti-virus program
installed on a PC at any given time. Please note that
this MS Beta program is Anti-Spyware, not Anti-Virus.
Multiple Anti-Spyware programs can be installed on a PC
to complement each other, i.e., catch what the other
can't detect. No Anti-Spyware scanner and/or remover
detects everything, unfortunate as it is, due to the
developmental state that Anti-Spyware applications are in
at this date. No problem, just get the ones that really
work and are also free: Eric Howes provides leadership in
this area of decision making with:
http://spywarewarrior.com/asw-features.htm#rec Keep
McAfee anti-virus, lose the Norton stuff, all of it, get
free ZoneAlarm (ZoneLabs.com), SpywareBlaster (free),
SpywareGuard (free), MS Anti-Spyware Beta 1 (free) 'cause
it used to be Giant Anti-Spyware which was maybe the best
of all, and cover the MS's back by getting AdAware SE
Personal (free), & RegVac (free for 30 days @
superwin.com). Have fun with it.
 
What makes you think so? There's certainly nothing built in to the OS to
limit this, and several folks have posted that they run more than one. I'll
gladly admit that this doesn't make sense to do for very many people, but
there's nothing keeping you from doing it except, perhaps, individual
product conflicts.
 
Bill Sanderson said:
What makes you think so? There's certainly nothing built in to the OS to
limit this, and several folks have posted that they run more than one. I'll
gladly admit that this doesn't make sense to do for very many people, but
there's nothing keeping you from doing it except, perhaps, individual
product conflicts.
--
Click to expand...
Bill

It depends on what you do when an anti-virus program finds a virus - if you
quarantine it the other av program is likely to find it again

Dick
 
Sure--there's potential for conflicts of various sorts--I'm not advocating
that many people go out and do this, but there are some folks, quite a few,
in fact, who like to have a couple of different a/v apps installed--perhaps
not both doing real-time scanning, just 'cause they like having them both
available. There's nothing in Windows that prevents this.
 
Hi, I use three anti-virus programs together and they don't conflict with each other. I use Avast, Antivir and Avg, these are all free and don't slow down or freeze your system like some of the others do. I admit I nearly always delete or heal a detected virus because if you quarantine a virus one of the others will detect it somewhere later down the line. You must install Avast first then the other two in any order. When you install Avg you must click on advanced install and uncheck e-mail scanner. I set antivir to medium detection level in configuration, if you set it to high you get a lot of false positives. I set Avast on high sensitivty and leave Avg settings as they are. Antivir also has an anti-rootkit built in so this is handy. I hope this is some help to you.

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