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Turning off Antivirus, etc. for IE7 Installation

Subscriber George Hale wrote recently to say:

Your current issue [October 15,2006 - Terry] talks about IE 7. You say " To install, the IE team recommends temporarily disabling your anti-spyware, anti-adware and anti-virus applications. "

My question is how do I do this ?? I have AVG, AdAware,Spybot Search and destroy, and Hijack.

You may have to check their sites for instructions if they have always running items, if they don't have links in their Start menu entries or by right-clicking on their Windows Status Bar icon.

I was able to provide some information to George:

• AVG Free Version (which I run on my Home Theater PC, my real machines that do email and surf the web use NOD32) -- right click on the AVG icon in the status bar, Click on AVG Control Center, double-click on AVG Resident Shield -- and uncheck Turn on AVG Resident Shield Protection (don't forget to turn it back on again later). I don't know if it has any other always-running components or not. Check the web site if you aren't sure.
• AdAware - if you're running the free version, I don't think it has a always-running protection module -- that was one big difference with the paid version. I haven't used AdAware since switching to CounterSpy, so I'm not up to date on it. Check their web site.
• Spybot S&D - I haven't used it in a while, either, so I'm not up to date on its features. If I recall correctly, the TeaTimer component is an always-running service that could get you, if you allowed it to be set up. You can use WinPatrol or Windows Services Manager (Run, services.msc) if it's running. There is some automation built into the current versions, which have Default and Advanced modes -- I'm not familiar with them. Check the Spybot Search & Destroy web site (http://www.safer-networking.org) -- note that it is .ORG not .com! The .com is an unrelated commercial site.
• Hijack -- I don't know this program.
• HijackThis -- last time I used it, it was a run-on-request analyzer, not a protection tool. It did not run all the time.

George's email continued...

When I looked at a couple of these I did not see a " disable" button or anything close to what my old eyes could see.

Also many times for other programs the article says to turn off runing programs. In win 98 I used to do that by hitting " ctrl-alt-delete " and deleted most of the programs except Explorer and systry if mu old mind remembers. Not sure how to do it in Win XP !! I am 76 and not very good shape. Spend most of the day on the computer and internet.

I use WinPatrol for those types of tasks, and especially controlling auto-starting programs. By the way, both WinPatrol and CounterSpy flag new programs that set themselves up to run automatically.

On theses programs, when asked by WinPatrol and CounterSpy, I ALLOW them to be set up -- then, after rebooting (sometimes, these programs have to make finishing touches on the reboot), I use WinPatrol to Disable their autostart. I leave the program in the list -- unchecked -- so if that is a problem, I can easily re-enable it.

CounterSpy runs all the time and finds them first. It already has some information on what's ok, so it will automatically allow programs like Microsoft Office's ctfmon.exe. WinPatrol monitors the status every couple minutes and gives me more fine control. This gives me the advantage that, after CounterSpy allows ctfmon to set itself up for automatic running, WinPatrol comes behind and disables it (like I want)!

George ended with

I enjoy your newsletter and many others.

By the way I got a new computer in June with Win XP and am trying to understand it. Had Win 98, 95 and the older Win 3 something in the past !! Time flies.

Thanks
George
Colorado

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