free software- then they want you to pay

Are we all "scrooges" and don't want to pay- or am I imagining things?? Like they say "you only get what you pay for lol

You keep posting these thoughts with very little input of your own for direction. What exactly are you asking?

There is freeware and there is shareware. Freeware is always to be free, shareware is try before you buy. Of course there are jerks that say free and then have nags, ads, viruses, etc.

We have a list of very good freeware here. These are hand-picked and used by our members. Even so, many include toolbars (often added just to make some money but are unrelated to the product) that you are best to unselect during install; always read carefully before hitting NEXT.

And read the fine print. Often the free software really means free download - a marketing gimmick.

As far as you only get what you pay for, that is simply not true with a lot of "freeware". Microsoft Security Essentials, for example is free and an excellent anti-malware solution. Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Opera are all free. Open Office is free as is CCleaner. Several versions of Linux are free.

That said, the developers of these products need to feed and shelter their families too, so they need to generate some income. I don't mind the toolbars as long as I am provided an option to opt-out installing them. ALWAYS - as in EVERY SINGLE TIME select the custom install option when installing anything so you can opt-out of the added "fluff".

Quite right Diggy!

Thanks Digerati, I use Opera,CC cleaner,Microsoft Security Essentials as well as Kasperski 2011. I have learnt by making a lot of mistakes with XP,Vista. Windows 7 is very good. SleepyH22,,,

That may be a mistake. Both are anti-malware solutions and it is generally recommended to only run one real-time anti-malware program at a time. This is because both are deep rooted programs tasked to monitor system activities and critical resources. There is the potential of conflicts as one program wonders what the other is up to - like two guard dogs guarding the same bone.

If nothing else, it is a waste of CPU and RAM resources to have both running at the same time. In this case, two is NOT better than one. It is good to have a 2nd scanner for "on-demand" supplemental or manual scanning. But not two scanners running "in-memory" at the same time.

Same with firewalls. If you have Kasperski's firewall running, make sure Windows Firewall is disabled.

Agreed. It is OK to have an active solution (running in memory at all times) as well as a passive solution (that you run manually, such as the freeware portion of malwarebytes) but it is not recommended to have two active AVs in memory.

Understood, thanks, can you tell me how how to address this problem. Can I turn off "Essentials" system??

Have just gone into Security Essentials and unticked all options under Settings." Computer status- potentially unprotected. Am I on the right course of action??

You really need to uninstall it otherwise it will leave things in start-up that load in memory.