Is It Good To Have Multiple Antivirus Programs On My PC?

Last week, I had a new customer who had an infection on their PC.  In an effort to remove the infection on their own, they decided to install Multiple Antivirus programs on their PC.    The customer thought the more security meant better protection for their PC.    While this idea may sound good in theory, it is not advisable and not good for your PC.   Antivirus programs are designed to detect harmful programs and files on your system.  They do this by a number of different ways.   Because Antivirus programs can remove files and delete or modify files, much like Viruses themselves, other Antivirus Software can be detected as a potential threat by another Antivirus software.  In addition both will compete with each other, both could try to modify your firewall settings.  Having multiple Antivirus will use up lots of your system's resources making your PC slower to respond.     You should not have Norton, McAfee, AVG, MS Security Essentials all installed at once.   In fact having this many can actually weaken your security on the PC.  You only need one Antivirus Software on your PC.

As for Antispyware programs, having multiple is usually acceptable and can add to your security for your PC.    Some programs such as Norton 360 or Microsoft Security Essentials do both by providing you Antivirus protection and Antispyware protection.   Even using one of these you could still add an additional Antispyware program such as Spybot if you wanted too.    For my personal computer, I use Antivirus Software combined with two Antispyware programs.    At ZolexPC we use Microsoft Security Essentials which includes Antivirus and Antispyware.   This updates by itself and requires little interaction with the home user.

Do not install Multiple Antivirus on your computer as it will give you far more problems than it will solve.   When it comes to Antivirus, you want One and One only.   If you have multiple installed currently, choose the one that is best for you and install the rest.   For Antispyware, while you can have many 2 is usually sufficient.  Anything more and you will probably find it to be more intrusive and annoying than helping to protect your PC.   Be sure you are only running one Antivirus program on your PC.

Thanks for reading and have a great rest of the week.

Steve

www.zolexpc.com

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