mcafee expired a few weeks ago but says personal firewall plus and virus scan are protecting?

Question

privacy service and spamkiller are expired. It show antiabuse and antispam at a red and antihacker green (antivirus orange).

I just realized my windows firewall was off and turned it on..does this mean I have two firewalls running (McAfee and windows) and is that bad.

I have avr free, avr spyware, spyblaster, and ad aware...am I protected..is anything missing and shouls I remove one of the firewalls or keep as is.

Answer 1

McAfee is not protecting your computer as the updates has expired so no new virus definitions are being loaded. Since you have several avr products, you really don't need McAfee, and I'd uninstall it.

Windows firewall is pretty good, and protects the computer from incoming threats, so losing McAfee won't hurt anything. Comodo has probably the best free firewall around and protects against incoming and outgoing information. It annoys some people because it asks everytime you log on if you want this started, or that started, but I like that. I choose what I want to run on the internet.

You can look at comodo here, and if you decide to get it, disable Windows firewall:
http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/

Answer 2

It is best to have one firewall running per system.
Since firewall controls all outgoing and incoming traffic, both firewalls will display the same message when a program tries to access the internet. So it will not make a difference if you have 2 instead of one because any traffic that is not detected by either one of the firewall is most likely not to be detected by the other one.

Also you do have too many programs protecting the system. Best will be to keep a good one and just have regular scans of others once a week or so, then uninstall them.

Here are some programs and tips for softwares you might consider to download.

http://www.safer-networking.org/
Uber powerful tool which can search and annhilate nasties that make it onto your system. Now with an Immunize section that will help prevent future infections.

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/
Another very powerful tool which searches and kills nasties that infect your system. AdAware and Spybot Search & Destroy compliment each other very well.

http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html
Great prevention tool to keep nasties from installing on your system.

http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareguard.html
Works as a Spyware "Shield" to protect your computer from getting malware in the first place.

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ehowes/www/resource.htm
puts over 5000 sites in your restricted zone so you'll be protected when you visit innocent-looking sites that aren't actually innocent at all.

http://cleanup.stevengould.org/
Cleans temporary files from IE and Windows, empties the recycle bin and more. Great tool to help speed up your computer and knock out those nasties that like to reside in the temp folders.

Windows Updates - It is very important to make sure that both Internet Explorer and Windows are kept current with the latest critical security patches from Microsoft. To do this just start Internet Explorer and select Tools > Windows Update, and follow the online instructions from there.

http://toolbar.google.com/
Free google toolbar that allows you to use the powerful Google search engine from the bar, but also blocks pop up windows.

http://www.trillian.cc/ or http://www.miranda-im.com/
These are Malware free Instant Messenger programs which allow you to connect to multiple IM services in one program! (AOL, Yahoo, ICQ, IRC, MSN)

Answer 3

what is going on is that while not fully up to date your Mcafee firewall is doing what it can to keep nastys out as the license has expired i would either buy a license or switch to another product I suggest one I used to use on my old system called zone Alarm firewal free for personal use. http://www.zonelabs.com it kept out roughly 2,500 nastys a week before the motherbourd overloaded and blew a circuit from some bad wiring inside the system.

Answer 4

McAfee is still protecting your computer. Your update service is no longer active unless you pay for the license. Basically any new and reported viruses hitting your machine may not be caught because you are not updating your virus protection.

Check Ebay for updated versions at cheaper prices.

Answer 5

If none of your internet programs are tweaking out, then having two firewalls isn't bad. It doesn't look like you're missing anything, and since you already have avg free, you don't really have anything to worry about.

Answer 6

Hi.. Go and find a copy of AVG free. Ive been using it for about 2 years and it seems to do the job They are also now giving a free anti spywear program. get that too... Just put AVG download in your browser and get the free version. :-)