This topic is a little out of place on this blog, but it is a technical story that I have dealt with, so I wanted to include it anyway…

The story starts with my mother-in-law’s computer running slow.  It is running Windows 8.  Chrome was taking about 20 minutes just to open up, and the whole computer just felt sluggish to me.  She was also complaining about popups from McAfee saying that the computer was unprotected.

When I opened Task Manager, I found that McAfee was using almost 1G of RAM!  Is there any excuse for that?  McAfee supposedly was out of date and shouldn’t have been doing anything anyway.  Why would I want to pay for the subscription if this is the way it is going to run?

 

McAfee took forever to uninstall, but once it did and rebooted, the computer was back to new again.  Chrome started immediately, and the computer felt normal again.

Now, to install an antivirus back on to get it protected again.  Does anyone have suggestions?

I have been partial to Clam Antivirus (Windows version) because it is open source.  For now, I just activated Windows Defender.  It was easier with no extra install.  I just search for it in the control panel and updated the virus definitions.  I assume that it will automatically download the definitions, whereas Clam would constantly popup and require manual downloads.  I have also heard that AVG is free for personal use.

Does anyone have any recommendations?  Please comment below.