What is worse, a virus or an antivirus?

Sometimes the real results are different from our expectations I remember of a popular antivirus made in South America, Per Antivirus, for the year 2002, my chief decided to buy this antivirus, with the good purpose of "protect the computers against virus". After installing this software in severals computers was imposible to use Outook Express, for sending or receiving emails, the antivirus corrupted the configuration of the e-mail accounts and the complaint was general: i can't use Outlook after that you installed that antivirus!. Was required to restore these settings. Also there were changes in the colours of the Desktop and icons of the Windows Explorer(in Windows 98). This antivirus doesn't slow down your computer but provides a very limited protection. The activation of the software was other problem, was required severals hours to activate the software in few of computers, helped by the tech support of the antivirus.

Norton Antivirus, considered such a professional antivirus or the world's most trusted antivirus isn't free of complaints, when is executed consume dozens of MB of RAM memory by it's multiples process ( System services and user process); if one of them is not well configurated, damaged or is a new product for you, you will get unceasing warnings at your screen.

many Symantec customers have been forced to spend an inordinate amount of time recovering from the damage caused by Norton Antivirus until they finally realize the only solution is to remove the Symantec virus from their machine for good. This from a program that allegedly will protect us against similar damage from a "real" virus, that might happen once in a lifetime. Of course, when and if that virus attack does occur, this product may not protect us from it at all. After all, it only protects (sometimes) against "known viruses". The "heuristics" for detecting "unknown viruses" sometimes do nothing but trigger false alarms, providing absolutely no real protection against true threats. If you install WinSession Logger remove this antivirus and try other.

Ironically, most of us have never had a virus attack unless we open every attached file that we receive that was not requested (and have no way of knowing whether or not we are really protected should one occur).  So, NAV's protection has only been theoretical for many of us, whilst its damage has been all too real, lost hours of time and feel frustration.  

In versions like 2004 and others of NAV, a simple update program dind't work properly without causing so many severe problems,like reboots, lost your opened files and more and won't even acknowledge the full scope of the problem.

Would strongly recommend that you remove all Symantec products from your computer before they cause irreparable damage. You may also be surprised how many "Windows problems" will disappear when you do so. Unfortunately, Symantec has made the process of complete removal very difficult for the novice, and there will be a great deal of residual in your registry and on your hard disk. Fortunately, other than taking up valuable space, leaving the residual will do no harm.

Is a fact that if you use less software in your computer running in background, like a voluminous antivirus (i remember of Panda Antivirus platinum 7, who requires more of 80MB in your disk and use more of 150MB of RAM memory) you will not have troubles with your Windows, but is very important to know basic rules to avoid infections with virus:

Rules to avoid or reduce infections with virus

• Don't install programs from Peer to Peer networks, like Kazaa, emule, Ares, etc.
• Don't install any Active X control from any warez site, i suggest you to use Spyware Blaster to avoid the installation of unwanted software by your web browser.
• If you receive an email with an attached file with a exe, scr, com delete it inmediatelly. Apply the same for "unknown extensions", for example .bhk,bbs, reg,pif, etc. Some windows programs uses these extensions and sometimes they are registered in the registry of your computer. For example the .bhk extension is used by the popular Winzip and this extension was used for severals virus not much time ago, this security risk still exists for versions older that 9.x. If the attached file doesn't have one asocciation with him , the risk is near of zero.
• If executing an exe from a not secure source is indispensable, then execute an on-line virus scanner if you don't have a reliable antivirus installed in your PC, try these links:

• BitDefender
• Trend Micro

Also don't forget of doing a incremental backup of your most important data on CDs or other media severals times at week or month, sometimes disk fails.

*Tipically dozens of new virus definitions are being added every month.