The Energon Pub

I have a Gateway laptop with Windows Vista. Somehow some Trojan, worm, or virus got through, so I installed McAfee security. I think I'm protected for now, but does anyone have any tips?

I also want to uninstall Internet Explorer, but I can't figure out how. To me, it's a horrible browser. Any feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Internet Explorer is integrated into Vista and can't be removed so you're stuck with that. Just use Firefox or other third party browser instead.

Your Antivirus software should be fine, but if you're that worried about virus problems and Windows mishaps, my only advice is to stop using Windows.

Do you use a firewall? Something free like Zonealarm or Comodo would probably be fine. Windows has a built-in firewall, but I'm not sure how good it is. (It figures, I should know or finf out since I'm working toward a degree in IT.)

As for antivirus software, there's a great free solution called AntiVir.

http://www.free-av.de

When I ran XP i used Avast home edition (Anti-virus), Zone alarm free (Firewall), Windows Defender (Anti-malware), Spybot-Search and Destroy (Anti-spyware) and CCleaner (general Windows cleaning program).

I also used Firefox and Thunderbird, these are two of the best free web browser and email clients out there

Though i know Vista has changed how much of the system anti-"whatever" programs can access, but i don't think its a problem with the newer versions of these programs.

I had no problems really running these programs on XP, they all worked fine, and they worked well, but now I'm running Ubuntu V7.10 and have had no virus or malware or whatever problems, the only security programs I'm running are Avast home edition (Linux version) and Firestarter (Firewall).