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Antivirus, Firewall, Both, Neither?

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jhartley111:

Currently, I have a wireless adapter on my cab that is disabled by instant sheller when I am booting to Mala. When I undo the changes made by instant sheller it boots to XP the wireless adapter is enabled so I can exchange files with my other computer or get something from the internet if need be. This setup has worked great up until now.

My goal is to start having the adapter enabled at all times so that I can play Street Fighter 4 online when it finally comes out... which brings me to my problem.

Right now, I have no antivirus or firewalls or anything set up so that I'm minimizing the drag on the computer. That's fine right now because it's very very rarely connected to the internet. That will change soon and I'm wondering what's the best way to protect the computer while placing the smallest burden on it, or if I need protection at all.

There won't be any internet browsing going on, only SF4. What kind of protection is needed in a situation like that? AV, firewall, both?

thanks

ChadTower:


What you need protection from isn't the internet as much as it is local intrusion through the wireless adapter.  At the very least turn off peer to peer connections - but best practice would be a hardware isolated firewall (if your adapter is not on board) or second tier is a local software firewall in the OS.

Doing this will also protect it from anything on the net finding it as well.

Namco:

No Anti-Virus, Windows built-in firewall. Just make sure Microsoft updates are turned on and you keep it updated. Windows' natural defenses when fully pached will protect you from everything excluding some miracle 0-day worm that some hacking group might pull out of their ass, but that never happens.

Also don't surf any unsafe sites, browse using Firefox only, use gmail or another webhost with a bulletproof spam filter and you should be good. I haven't run any anti-virus or firewall in a couple years. Being behind a wireless router is an automatic harware firewall. The outside hackers only see your dumb router behind your IP address and there's no way to get to your computer without physicall being on your home network.

bkenobi:

The firewall is going to eat a bit of resources (just like AV will).  You might want to turn them on only when you go to the web.  You should be good when you aren't connecting to anything, so it's really just needed when you are visiting web sites and such.  If you are concerned about unknown system activity, you can use filemon (a M$ power tool written by SysInternals) to watch file accesses.  That can show you when malware is writing to your HDD.

Xiaou2:


 Windows update as a Security Measure?! 

 I fix PCs for a living.. .and that is the funniest thing Ive ever heard   :laugh2:


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