Windows 7: are these PC protection shareware superfluous?

my shutdown takes an awful long time, and I'm also curious if I can speed up the start-up, and one thing I'm curious about is how wasteful/pointless my free protection software is.

I have Avast!, ThreatFire, SUPERAntiSpyware, and Malwarebytes all running on start-up. I assume Windows Firewall also does whatever it does. (I used to have ZoneAlarm before switching to Windows 7, and I figured that would be superfluous now).

do I not need to have any of this running in the background? (I thiiink one or two of these offer no active protection but only scanning)

is there any list of what free software is worth getting to supplement the operating system you use and what is redundant in light of the protections already offered?

I've never had virus issues, so I don't know much about this software, including how much of it is just useless lag on my system. any insight would be appreciated.

Hi,

Avast and Malwarebytes resident at startup is fine, and quite light - I would remove the rest. Perhaps your lag issues are due to something else?

Which items are sitting in your Startup?

Regards,
Golden

thanks.
no idea what else might cause the lag. indexing rarely runs, and recently I realized monthly defragging took place near when I would shut-down sometimes, but obviously it doesn't explain what seems like an unusually long daily shut-down time (~5 minutes)

here's a clip from CCleaner

Hi,

In MSCONFIG, I would disbale everything except the Microsoft Services, measure the bootup and shutdown time, then start loading up the other services one at a time, and again measuring startup and shutdown times until you identify the culprit.

The issue could be the bloatware that comes as part of your OEM installation too. Have a read here:

Clean Up Factory Bloatware
Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7

Regards,
Golden

Unless the OS is caught in an endless loop during shutdown, it would be logging events as they occur. Pay a visit to the Event Viewer and see if there are any commonalities during shutdowns.

The free version of MBAM is an on-demand scanner. Therefore, it does not need to start at boot, unless you wish to run a scan after the boot. Still, it's just a few seconds to cold-launch a program.

I'm not familiar with the other securities but one shouldn't have two active anti-virus programs running concurrently. Having two doesn't make one doubly secure. A conflict and a power struggle between the two programs could occur.

aah, excellent. I knew there was a bootlog and hoped there might be something like that for shutdown, too.

EDIT: I followed the 'view-details-last-shutdown-computer' tutorial, but can't find anywhere that will give me any details on what programs where doing what/when, etc.
EDIT2: scratch that, I understand how the log works, now (I've been expecting to see a list of events in a file, not each individual event separately logged as it is). According to the log, from the first to the last 'shutdown' related processes displayed, it only takes 1:30 to shutdown the PC. ...I'm going to have to time it tonight, 'cause it seems much much longer than that.


also, if you don't mind, I have two tangential questions:

- what's the best way to go about learning more about what Event Viewer tells me (specifically about 'kernal-power' critical events? -- I got a blue screen that auto-rebooted this morning before I could finish reading it, and these logs don't seem to tell _me_ anything helpful, it's always just 'kernal-power'. ... I don't know if that means my power supply fluctuated too much, or if kernal-power relates to the improper shutdown that followed the event, rather than the cause of the event.)

- also in Event Viewer is listed a few "controller error on \Device\Harddisk2\DR2" (which I assume means an external drive, since I only have one local disk (unless this is referring to my D: partition?). An error I thought was resolved which I made a thread about a few weeks back has been persisting lately, where my external takes a notable amount of time to display in my computer (it typically is visible as a 'device' in TrueCrypt sooner than Computer displays its unencrypted partition, that's how slow Windows 'autorun' type responses are being to its connection) and I also can't get my external drive to safely eject. ... not sure if this is what these disk error messages are about.

"- also in Event Viewer is listed a few "controller error on \Device\Harddisk2\DR2" (which I assume means an external drive, since I only have one local disk (unless this is referring to my D: partition?). An error I thought was resolved which I made a thread about a few weeks back has been persisting lately, where my external takes a notable amount of time to display in my computer (it typically is visible as a 'device' in TrueCrypt sooner than Computer displays its unencrypted partition, that's how slow Windows 'autorun' type responses are being to its connection) and I also can't get my external drive to safely eject. ... not sure if this is what these disk error messages are about."

This may not be tangential. External drives are hard-wired to go to sleep after a pre-determined time of inactivity regardless of OS power settings. If an attempt to shutdown occurs while the drive is asleep, the delay will accrue during this interaction between the OS and the drive via the (third-party?) controller.

Also, if the external is not continuously active, try to access the external without doing any input/output, then safely eject. In other words, wake up the giant before putting it back to sleep.

"- what's the best way to go about learning more about what Event Viewer tells me (specifically about 'kernal-power' critical events?"

I tried to get help in the bottom right column for my critical "error 3-kernel-eventtracing" and Microsoft returned zero search result. So laughable I could cry.

The paid version of Malwarebytes is the only one with a real time option. It is designed to run alongside other AVs so it is fine to use with Avast.

my external drives are rarely used (they're not expansion but only back-up, so I only load them for short periods), they don't boot up/shut down with the PC itself -- I always eject them before shutting down the PC (unless I'm getting the 'still in use cannot eject' message and need to reboot in order to eject).

yea, I do that (though I suspect opening it in explorer to cause it to wake up is no different to causing it to wake up by prompting it to eject)
that's why I'm so puzzled it can tell me something is still using it and so it can't eject, because I hear it spin-down to idle.

Sometimes problems are solved by uninstalling Avast to replace it with Microsoft Security Essentials.

There are reasons most here have stopped recommending Avast.