Well, I'm starting to uncheck certain services/startups and I'm wondering which would be better to uncheck. My personal opinion?

McAfee has done nothing but good for me. Around the time I bought this computer, I was browsing around sites on google and happen to fall right into a site with a virus. McAfee detected it and deleted it right away. Never really had anything wrong concerning viruses again. My only gripe though is the fact it has to ask me for permission to allow new programs to access the internet. This can be useful, but just a little annoying, I can get over it. And it hogs quite a bit of resources.

But AVG, I recently installed it this year at around July, and haven't really experienced problems, just constant updating but that's usual. I've never seen anything wrong with AVG. I just have one question. I don't exactly know EVERYTHING about AVG or fully yet computer savvy but, if I disable McAfee, could I use AVG as a firewall/virus scanner? Sorry if it's an idiotic question but eh.. >_>

Opinions/reccomendations will certainly be appreciated.

AVG is strictly an Anti-virus, and has no firewall functionality. I would hesitate to have two AVs both providing real time protection, as these can slow down your computer, cause conflicts within Windows, and often will find the other's virus definitions and files in virus vaults reporting these as viruses.

My own preference is to "cocktail" my security applications, choosing different companies' products for different functions. This allows me to pick "best of breed" and find the combination that is most efficient.
Regards,
John

i got avg and it has got a firewall in it i payed £60 for it and yes its a lot better then mcafee ,
its got all what i need .
i hate mcafee its slows a pc down

Although McAfee is as good as any other well known anti-virus program, it has become a resource hog that slows down your system especially if on dial-up or if installed on older systems without much RAM/slow CPU. McAfee requires numerous services and more than a dozen running files that use a lot of system resources. Further McAfee products, like Symantec, are becoming difficult to remove.

Using more that one anti-virus program is not advisable even if your using one of them as a stand-alone on demand scanner. Even when one of them is disabled, it can affect the other.

Most anti-virus vendors recommend that you install and run only one anti-virus program at a time:
Symantec's statement.
Avast's statement.
AVG's statement.
Dell Support advises the same for their systems.

Hi. I have conducted several independent tests over the years on infected machines. I also see many infected machines in my repair shop running software that allowed things through. My view? McAfee in various incarnations has been the worst offender as a large 'paid for' suite that doesn't perform.

Currently, AVG antivirus seems to beat McAfee's antivirus in detection rates. The same can be said for the antispyware programs from the same vendors.

As the guys said above, only put one antivirus on your PC but you can have a few antispyware programs on there as long as they scan separately.

Hope this helps

Okay..I see having two AV's with real-time protection is bad..but is it OK if, let's say, I have two AV's, but only one provides real-time protection?

Even when one of them is disabled, it can affect the other. Issues can arise when the active anti-virus detects the non-active one's definitions or quarantined files. Anti-virus software components insert themselves into the operating systems core and using more than one can cause instability, crash your computer, slow performance and waste system resources.

Agree with quietman above. If you want a second opinion on your antivirus scanning, use one of the online scan tools that are available from the likes of BitDefender and Kaspersky (to name a few). Our test rigs are regularly scanned with all major manufacturers' antivirus and antispyware tools.