ok heres the situation, i want to get rid of norton antivirus/firewall 2004 cause i cant stand how shit it is, but i dont wanna lose NORTON SYSTEMWORKS and i know you can just install SYSTEMWORKS without installin NAV2004 but i would rather just get rid of NORTON from my system (once and for all) .... so anyone know a good alternative for these? a good virus scanner .... also I need a good firewall, (doesnt have to be free), what i want to focus on is a program that does its job (unlike nav2004) and is resource-friendly.... hopefully someone that has used norton and has switched to someone better, ... thanks

RaZoR

Well, it's most likely to happen that 20 people will post in here what they use and you will get 20 different opinions of what is the killer app. So I do not claim to name the ultimate applications but oh well, here they are:

AV: BitDefender Free Edition (http://www.bitdefender.com/)
FW: ZoneAlarm (Pro) (some people also recommend Sygate, I never used it though)

With the arrival of Windows XP SP2 I'd switch to the built-in Windows firewall, for it's just damn good imo.

You should be aware of the fact that you cannot totally rely on recommendations of just one site. Try to compare two programms via the google search. You'll end up with a bunch of sites that all tell you a different story. You easily figure out the big fishes though but the rest is up to your personal taste.

So please, no flames like "A sux, B is better".

as above ...
firewall: XP SP2 or Sygate personal firewall (its free and shareware VERY resource saving) http://www.sygate.com
AV: http://www.bitdefender.com for free one with a copy of the KAV engine or
http://www.kaspersky.com for the original with awesome handling/features
what else you need ? you install systemworks for those 2 things ?
what else does systemworks contain ?

btw: Bitdefender pro has a built in "Firewall" !
but if it´s good?
dunno

well i am hearing great things about XP's new firewall *cough*lawsuit*cough* , well looks like Norton Firewall is out of the picture, another great feature for NORTON SYSTEMWORKS is ONE BUTTON CHECKUP which is basically a scan thingy that checks if registry settings are bad, broken shortcuts, web cleanup (not that important), i run that weekly, .... thanks for the input :beer:

RaZoR

but firewalls.....
look at this short Text

and for AV check this Link

I never used features such as registry cleanup and so on. My system runs absolutely perfect without these apps. I think these features a just an invention to earn more money like these silly geek gamer hardware like plastic mousepads that wear out your mouse surface if you don't buy the appropriate mouse "skatez" also. After a phase of believing in this crap I switched back to a regular mouse pad (had everglide and ratpadz). The best way to a smoothly running system ist to not install too much crap software and to use features like the system restore utility.