Off Topic

[Chris]

First chance I've had to do anything in hours so I decided to upgrade my old TuneUp Utilities 2009 to 2011 and there is a new feature that allows "turning off" unused programs to save on PC load. This feature also shows how much you will save with each disable and this Firebird program is a pretty large difference when disabled.



If you look at the graph on the left the black/grey slashed diagonal lines at the top of the 3 bars is the amount of load I can save. It's a pretty significant change. The only thing is I have no idea if there is a reason for it being there. I've been doing searches for the last 20min. and haven't found much out about it yet. It's something to do with servers and SQL databases but I have no clue as to what it would be tied with on this thing.

I thought about just disabling it but what happens if it's needed somehow and then I can't restart this thing or something? I don't remember ever adding it so I'm not sure if it's been installed on this thing since day one or if it was installed with something else down the years.

Ever hear of it or see it on your computer?

[Chris]

Took a chance and disabled it in TuneUp Util. 2011. Haven't noticed anything different really as of yet. I ended up doing the same for a few more things in the screen above too.

[betterdan]

I see Eset and Microsoft Security Essentials installed on your computer. You should never install 2 antivirus programs on a computer at the same time. It could really slow your computer down.
We had Eset at work and was trying out a new program and my coworker forgot to uninstall Eset first. It took almost 2 hours just to log in, bring up the control panel and then uninstall Eset.
I would uninstall one of them if I were you. I like Microsoft Security Essentials myself.

[Chris]

I've been running both for a while now and surprisingly haven't had any issues. I Googled to see if the 2 were compatible before installing MSE. I've actually considered looking for a replacement to Eset as I've had a few things slip by it during scans. However it has been great on snagging those on the fly web installed viruses which seems to always get past MSE(unless Eset is just faster in that regard and doesn't give MSE the chance). The downside is that I can run a scan with Eset and it will miss a few things but MSE will pick up on them. If only I could combine the two.

[betterdan]

I would still get rid of 1, it usually causes problems with 2 installed.

You should *never* run more than one antivirus product that provides real time protection as they will conflict, causing performance issues, system instability, and may even cause protection to be compromised.
MSE should not be installed on a system that includes any other antivirus program.
--
Stephen Boots
MVP-Windows Live Microsoft MVP Windows Live | Windows Live OneCare | Live Mesh | MS Security Essentials Forums Moderator

[Chris]

I've been messing around with Tuneup disabling even more programs and I turned on more options to show a better display of what they do for pc load in regards to startup, shutdown, etc. This is where I'm at now:



I'm trying to decide on a few of the other things like the HP Quick Launch buttons and MS Office. I actually disabled the Apple Mobile Service but then couldn't connect my iPod as iTunes would no longer recognize it so I had to turn it back on. The one that makes a huge impact is Acronis. Look at the impact:



I have considered doing what I used to do and turn it off until I want to make a backup and then just enable it since I don't currently run it on any schedule. I'm actually trying to decide if it's of any benefit to keep some older backups I made from 09 which at this point I think are safe to remove. I have more current from this year anyway. Just one would save me just under 50GB on my secondary drive. Plus I have the backups that windows itself makes that I could also ditch and just use Acronis from here out. That would limit my secondary drive to 1 backup that just gets updated however often and my entire iTunes library. I would still have about the same amount of space used as I do now but it would be less intensive during a scheduled defrag.

I haven't really installed much new on this in recent times(the last few months) other than MSE back when it was released, Easeus Partition Master, PefectDisk 11 and the update to Tuneup Utilities 2011. I did install some MP3 converter but that is minor compared to the others.