Virus riddled in my PC

[Sharon]

I'll vouch for e-buyer too, just bought No. 1 daughter a 500GB ext hard drive for £59 with free next day delivery from them, she's just bought herself an Apple iMac so wanted to save all her college work etc.

[AnnieM]

Just read through this post and spotted Limewire!  DD uses this and I've never thought twice about it (I'm not that knowledgeable about bad sites)!  Is this a bad site?  My pc has been playing up and is getting slow - could this be the culprit?

Somebody who my OH works with says limewire is the kiss of death for a pc.  maybe a bit dramatic but apparently he knows what he is talking about.  He recommended using mininova or isohunt but you have to go into the settings and specify the type of files you will allow to be downloaded, he said under no circumstances allow any .exe files??  Not sure whether this is correct or not, as I said I know nothing, which is why I allowed DS to use limewire.   

[Robbie34]

I wouldn't download anything from sites such as Limewire. 

I also wouldn't use McAfee and similar programmes that slow down your PC.  I had a free subscription to McAfee on my new PC and I have removed it.  As soon as I had set it up McAfee removed some e.mails.  If you buy a legitimate copy of XP then use the Windows Firewall, and download a copy of Windows Defender from the Microsoft website.  Use AVG for your anti-virus prodgramme and you should be fine.  I used these on my last PC that I bought two years ago and it has been fine.  I'm now using the same on this one.

[Sheryl]

Nope, don't agree.  Norton definitely slowed down my pc, no doubt but not McAfee that I have noticed.  Sorry to be misleading about Limewire.  It was the initial page that showed up as safe.  I didn't go any further but if I had, McAfee would have picked up on it as it does anything else dodgy.  I have never installed anything else with McAfee, not anti spyware, nor any other protection.  AVG is fine too.  The point I am trying to make is that if you don't download, you don't have a problem, unless it is from Adobe, Java or big trustworthy companies.  It is easy to download stuff without even realising it.  Sometimes you get pop ups warning about spyware with options to clean or cancel.  To click on either of these can unleash all sorts of rubbish as I found to my cost.  I had to get my son to clean up everything   When in doubt, click top right hand!