Windows 7 without Antivirus

[Capella]

I know about the ram. I'm not really that concerned about it actually that much but im concerned about the cpu spikes. It is actually causing noticeable lags in file copying performance and my winsat score decreased slightly.
Ill keep the program....But i still think avs are more troublesome than the rare malware....

 

[Dark Nova Gamer]

I know about the ram. I'm not really that concerned about it actually that much but im concerned about the cpu spikes. It is actually causing noticeable lags in file copying performance and my winsat score decreased slightly.
Ill keep the program....But i still think avs are more troublesome than the rare malware....

Well, each to their own but I haven't noticed any of what you described.

 

[Capella]

I know about the ram. I'm not really that concerned about it actually that much but im concerned about the cpu spikes. It is actually causing noticeable lags in file copying performance and my winsat score decreased slightly.
Ill keep the program....But i still think avs are more troublesome than the rare malware....

Well, each to their own but I haven't noticed any of what you described.

All you need to do is highlight your antimalware service. Then, go to internet explorer and switch between pages, or open up a program, or start an installer, or do anything really XD...You will see how the cpu usage changes. It drops back down almost immediately but it was enough to make a difference on my system.

Still, its better than mcaffee, symantec, or avast. ...

 

[Dark Nova Gamer]

I know about the ram. I'm not really that concerned about it actually that much but im concerned about the cpu spikes. It is actually causing noticeable lags in file copying performance and my winsat score decreased slightly.
Ill keep the program....But i still think avs are more troublesome than the rare malware....

Well, each to their own but I haven't noticed any of what you described.

All you need to do is highlight your antimalware service. Then, go to internet explorer and switch between pages, or open up a program, or start an installer, or do anything really XD...You will see how the cpu usage changes. It drops back down almost immediately but it was enough to make a difference on my system.

Still, its better than mcaffee, symantec, or avast. ...

Eh it jumped to about 6% of CPU usage. Which didn't lag me at all.. maybe something else is happening on your system. Perhaps you have malware! !

 

[Capella]

Hmm, My suspicion is that this is normal behavior directly after installing the av. It will spike for a while. Then, after several reboots and several incidents in which it has finished checking all the system files and everything, its usage will drop down significantly. Ill deal with it for now.

 

[Dark Nova Gamer]

Hmm, My suspicion is that this is normal behavior directly after installing the av. It will spike for a while. Then, after several reboots and several incidents in which it has finished checking all the system files and everything, its usage will drop down significantly. Ill deal with it for now.

Have you defragmented recently? Always helps.

 

[Orpheous]

I know about the ram. I'm not really that concerned about it actually that much but im concerned about the cpu spikes. It is actually causing noticeable lags in file copying performance and my winsat score decreased slightly.
Ill keep the program....But i still think avs are more troublesome than the rare malware....

I don't see the problem in running your operating system without an antivirus porgram, as long as you strictly follow these guidelines:

• Format, then install ONLY your operating system
• Remove all network cards and disable LAN in BIOS
• Remove/disable all wireless connectivity & dial up modems
• Remove all CD/DVD/Blu-Ray drives &/or access to them
• Disable all usb/firewire/eSATA/removable media ports - fill them full of epoxy resin to make sure nothing can be inserted
• Only buy and install hard drives that have been heat sealed inside anti static bags.
• Put a padlock on your case so no-one else can install usb headers, drives etc.
• Have fun with your totally virus free and protected computer!

Seriously though, safe computing other than in the form mentioned above doesn't exist. Most security configurations are a trade off between usability and total lockdown, with the mid point being acceptable on reasonable hardware.

I'm positive that a very high percentage of members on this site would have experienced the loss of important data due to infections in the past. Being unable to recover years of family photos etc. is heartbreaking, and I sincerely hope that it never happens to you.

 

[pparks1]

I don't go to any really malicious sites and I find that antiviruses are usually more trouble than they are worth.

I haven't generally found that AV apps cause much trouble at all on computers. As far as malicious sites...I generally don't go to them either, but just clicking on a link from a google search could result it hitting something that you weren't expecting.

Microsoft security essentials takes around 50 mb of ram

Is your computer really starved for RAM? I mean 50MB of ram on my system is less than 1% of my RAM. For comparison sake, I have Google Chrome 4 running right now with this open in 1 tab and one other website in another tab that is using 6 different processes and using 140MB of RAM. And in all honesty, my browser is really just sitting there doing absolutely nothing.

 

[Capella]

0% defrag , no malware, im running intel core i5 . Ill wait a few days and I expect the spikes to improve. (dangerously optimistic)
btw, Ive found many places online that talks about the cpu spikes with mse. Just google.

Im simply concerned about the loading of the ram at startup. parks. Before the mse, I know that after I type in password, windows almost immediately changes to the desktop (around 2 seconds) After mse, the time is greatly increased (around 10 seconds) I went to mse and disabled the check removable drives option. the time decreased to around 7 or 8 seconds.

@Orpheus: were you being serious? about the disable everything suggestion lol
I don't really do much on my computer, no storing massive amounts of family photos, etc (im not an adult!) I simply store schoolwork documents.

"I'm positive that a very high percentage of members on this site would have experienced the loss of important data due to infections in the past."

Really...?

 

[Dark Nova Gamer]

0% defrag , no malware, im running intel core i5 . Ill wait a few days and I expect the spikes to improve. (dangerously optimistic)
btw, Ive found many places online that talks about the cpu spikes with mse. Just google.

Lol wow. If anything I should be getting the spikes, not you.

 

[pparks1]

Spikes of 5-6% of your CPU really aren't a big deal either, are they? I mean I am sitting here with my laptop which runs wonderfully, I'm using next to no applications and this is what my task manager looks like.

And the spike that you see there is from when I launched paint.net to grab the image from my screen. But on modern dual and quad core processors you don't even feel those spikes

 

[Dark Nova Gamer]

Spikes of 5-6% of your CPU really aren't a big deal either, are they? I mean I am sitting here with my laptop which runs wonderfully, I'm using next to no applications and this is what my task manager looks like.

And the spike that you see there is from when I launched paint.net to grab the image from my screen. But on modern dual and quad core processors you don't even feel those spikes

I never meant it was a big deal. If anything I was stating it was really nothing and had little to no effect on my performance.

 

[Capella]

To parks:
I download anime a lot and they are large files
The trouble is that I save downloaded episodes to the external hard drive. Usually, I am watching anime while downloading a file. When the file is finished downloading, the windows explorer (copying file to external hdd) appears and loads.
With mse, while the copying of the file to external hdd is happening, the video im watching will lag, until the copying is finished.
Its something really really small and minor, but I guess mse isn't entirely efficient (I wouldn't expect it to. Its already a good program =D) but, minor irks (ex: videos taking longer to load, pages in internet explorer loading a bit slower, etc.)
Ah well...

 

[pparks1]

If you are watching the video from your external drive and saving that file to the external drive at the same time...you may be maxing out the USB2 bus as well.

MSE is not necessarily the be-all end all of AV apps. I use Avast on my wife's computer, MSE on my own personal machine, Trend on my machines at work and used to use AVG before MSE. All were a bit different, but mostly ran without me ever being aware of them or without experiencing any issues created by them.

For me, my OS runs from an SSD and my storage drive is a local SATA drive (WD caviar black). Everything else is on on my network and I'm only using a 100 megabit per second switch for everything. I generally don't see many lags or pauses with anything that I do.

 

[Capella]

you have an sdd? and a local SATA drive internally?
Ill swap you for my processor XD

 

[pparks1]

you have an sdd? and a local SATA drive internally?
Ill swap you for my processor XD

Thanks for the offer, but I think that I will keep my setup the way that it is. It really wasn't all that extravagant. My Intel X25-M Gen2 80GB was $289 and my 1TB WD Caviar Black was $99. So, less than $400 in my storage on my box.

My CPU is plenty for what I do. It's a quad core Q9550 which at stock is 2.83Ghz..but I'm running it at 3.2 on the stock cooler with no issues whatsoever.

 

[Orpheous]

@Orpheus: were you being serious? about the disable everything suggestion lol

It's the only way to be completely be sure that you will never get infected, but it wouldn't be much fun would it?

I don't really do much on my computer, no storing massive amounts of family photos, etc (im not an adult!) I simply store schoolwork documents.

I'm actually kind of jealous of kids these days, it'd be too easy to use the excuse "I lost my homework due to a virus". At the risk of sounding like an old fart, we had to be much more creative back in my day...

"I'm positive that a very high percentage of members on this site would have experienced the loss of important data due to infections in the past."

Really...?

Your response got me curious, so I've posted a poll here:
Have you ever lost data due to infections?
I think it'll be interesting to see the results, feel free to post your comments on it

 

[Orpheous]

you have an sdd? and a local SATA drive internally?
Ill swap you for my processor XD

Internal SATA drives are cheaper than external drives, but obviously not as convenient to carry information around on.
If you want convenience and a reasonable transfer speed, get yourself an eSATA drive, or an internal SATA drive inside an external SATA - eSATA case. You'll also need to have an eSATA port available on your pc to use it, if you don't have one, you can get a PCI eSATA card to fit an ATX motherboard

 

[Capella]

....wwat?? I got the first part but...ATX? PCI eSATA?

 

[Orpheous]

....wwat?? I got the first part but...ATX? PCI eSATA?

Short for external Serial ATA, essentially an external connection of the SATA standard that is now the widely used form of connector for internal hard drives. Convential SATA 2.0 connectors allow for a theoretical transfer rate of 300mb/s, a stark comparison to the 50-60mb/s per second currently offered under the USB 2.0 standard.

ATX = standard motherboard format used in desktop/tower cases

PCI = standard expansion card slot on an ATX motherboard - being replaced by PCI-E (see below)