Lightweight AV & firewall

D

DavidUK

New Member
We have an old Dell with 512 RAM running XP home, SP3. Current versions of AVG free and Zonealarm Free. With such low memory I'd like to try boosting startup times and freeing some memory generally be using less demanding security (it's behind a router).

Any suggestions? Preferably from someone who has experience of similar. Thanks
 
What model of dell do you have? It's in your best interest to increase system memory as it will help when running antivirus and firewall software. 512mb barely runs xp by itself efficiently. If you can upgrade to 2gb total, it will work wonders for your system.
 
voyagerfan99 said:
Get rid of AVG and go with Avast! or Microsoft Security Essentials.
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Yes, Avast has made quite a difference. At idle, Page File use was about 430MB with AVG, 320 with no AV, and about 340 with Avast. Also the boot time is much better and the system no longer hangs for 2-3mins at 100% CPU after boot.

johnb35 said:
What model of dell do you have? It's in your best interest to increase system memory as it will help when running antivirus and firewall software. 512mb barely runs xp by itself efficiently. If you can upgrade to 2gb total, it will work wonders for your system.
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Yeah, I know I need to, but it's an old system, a Dimension 2 series off the top of my head. I think it will take 1G total, but as we've had it about 8yrs now and it has a poor, small monitor I begrudge spending on memory when I know I need to replace the whole thing....
 
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