first of all, great post by graveangel (thank you post). I also am new to the forums and am thankful to all the contributors. Hopefully one day, I can pass the knowledge I've learned on to someone else and help them make their system more secure.

Now on to my question. We all know the symptoms of having a virus, spyware, or malware. But what are the symptoms of a well protected and well maintained computer, if any? Is it just that you have no freezes, quick surfing of the internet, quick shutdown, quick start, etc?

thanks in advance for your input. (I apologize for posting here, I didn't know which subforum to post this, hope it's ok)

Usually I think of a well-maintained system as having quick startup and shutdown time. There's also, of course, no spyware/pop-ups/viruses of course. One of the biggest things is that the computer must be working up to it's fullest potential, and not wasting any resources.

It's when you don't notice anything that things are going well, very much like yourself. We have a tendency to not notice the usual things in life, it's when things go awry that we notice them.

Just keep up with the periodic maintenance, defrag, delete cookies, run scans for all the critters trying to slow you down, and keep every thing updated and you should be fine.

I have to echo the above comments. A malware-free and well-maintained computer will have no symptoms save that of operating well without crashing.
Regards,
John

Yes. We can't really notice a "fast" system unless we've experience a slow one.

Also one may still experience a BSOD or a slow startup without having spyware or viruses/trojans.

Example: My computer setup doesn't handle Google Desktop very well. One day I installed it, and upon installatino I got a BSOD. Never got one before since I wiped my hard drive. It only happened upon installation.