Windows XP Pro: recommendations needed for AV, Firewall, Backup and Defrag

[xane]

Upgrade to XP has rendered most of my above mentioned software useless or unuseable, the grand old retirement into "legacy".

Okay but here's the catch, I need them as "services" so they can run or be active without me being logged in, if this is possible (not being an NT guy I have a limited knowledge on this sort of thing).

TIA.

 

[PR.]

Norton AntiVirus Pro 2003 - service - scheduled scans

O&O Defrag Pro - service - scheduled scans - bootup defrags - best defrag program

MS Backup - Scheduled works fine logged in or off - never had problems with it

Firewall I don't know

 

[xane]

Ta for those, I was considering NAV since I've got 2000/1 but it doesn't work on XP.

Just to confirm, basically even if I log off and it goes into standby, the scheduled virus scan will still go ahead ?

 

[PR.]

Well not under standby as the machine is switched off you can set the monitor to go off and lock the machine WinKey + L but going into standby will stop everything

 

[Testin da Cable]

I'n not use MSBackup. heard some strange stuff about it from a mate. if you've never had probs with it than feel free not to listen to me

 

[MYstIC G]

If you're gonna use Norton Anti-Virus, use Norton Internet Security as its NAV & NPF (Personal Firewall) and with Norton stuff it always seems to work better when integrated.

O&O Defrag is the dogs danglies & MS backup does the job.

 

[.cage]

norton personal firewall is a bit shit, though
burn your backups with nero, and try zone alarm if you find it doesnt regularly crash, which happenes whenever i install it unfortunately :|
norton av is unquestionably the daddy, though

edit:

just noticed the services bit :< ms backup is fine in my experience, admittedly limited. Pretty much all firewalls you'll come accross will run as a service.

 

[Embattle]

Norton AntiVirus Pro 2003
O&O Defrag Pro


Outpost is a good Firewall although only the Pro version allows it to run as a service:

http://www.agnitum.com/products/outpost/

The company also includes a comparison table:

http://www.agnitum.com/php_scripts/compare.php

 

[.cage]

may i ask what the FUCK is o&o? any better than diskeeper?

 

[Embattle]

In the past I used DK7 but every so often I found it did some worrying things to my files after doing a boot time defrag, sometimes there would be loads of orphan files to fix afterwards and one time time after fixing the orphan files my computer failed to reboot properly :uhoh:

http://www.oosoft.de/english/products/oodefragv4/

 

[.cage]

ta

 

[caLLous]

I still use AtGuard as a firewall. Been using the same version for 3 years and it hasn't let me down yet. It became Norton Personal Firewall when Symantec bought WRQ, but I still prefer AtGuard.

 

[xane]

No-one used Tiny Personal Firewall ? The latest version is not free now.

 

[.cage]

i used it years ago and it rocked, but now its owned by mcafee isnt it?

 

[PR.]

I always like Diskeeper until it started corrupting my data :/

I have O&O on a daily defrag to sort out my swap file and other temp files as well as a weekly defrag off all drives, all being done when I'm asleep