The reasons I am so adamant about leaving all these 3rd party software off the machine are many.
As shown many times, they frequently are the cause of bsods. Even when they are not, they are the cause of hangs, shutdown hangs and other miscellaneous system problems.
In the chance they actually don't do the things as above, they can also add extreme latency to the polling procedures, as they often do. What that means is poor audio/video reliability and performance.
And this says nothing of how it slows the machine down while accessing already the slowest part of any system: the storage.
Personally how I feel, besides the malware that causes you to lose data, lots of 3rd party antivirus solutions are actually worse to have on the machine than malware itself.
That is why I always have and always will recommend MSE for 7 and below and built-in Windows Defender service for Windows 8. It is the only antimalware of them all that can not cause a bsod. Why? Because MS is excellent in that respect.
You can not find a single thread where it has caused one. And if you do, the people diagnosing it have gotten it completely wrong.
GMan, I fully understand your viewpoint, it has been impressed upon me by many members who, like you know a lot more about this than I do. I do know that MSE and WD don't provide me with the control and the assistance I need, and I have never read a review where they were top in effectiveness. Norton and NIS have been protecting me quite successfully and they are not listed as high as say Vipre or other. Seems to change week to week. As for NIS, I think I would have preferred, to have stuck with the AV and used Comodo as the firewall. I like the ability of the software to tell me that a download is safe, and is used and how much and in Comodo if I wanted it to run or not. These are resource hogging processes, but that is why I upgraded my computers. My systems run faster than my old XP Celeron, with a whole lot more going on. In W7 have never had a BSOD. In W8 the only recurrent problem I seem to have is the shutdown locking up. I found by hitting the left key to select the destop and Alt-F4 to shutdown, this problem is now 99% gone. Oh and the defrag not working correctly unless I choose it in properties in Explorer for the drive, under tools. Is the computer running as fast as it could, obviously not, is it running fast enough for me, loads.
Could you explain the part about the AV's being worse than losing data to malware. I find that statement interesting, remember my experience level if you choose to reply. I also run Secunia, which is a major slowdown of booting. Is that also considered a bad program? I believe in layers of protection. And not to rely on one program. That is why I run MSE manually once a week. And SuperAntispyware to back up Norton and Antimalwarebytes. On W8 since MS purposely cut out MSE, even though they support and update it for W7 and it has antimalware detection IIRC, I can't run WD as manual. I would. But again the msert.exe has all the power of WD and definitions so it will do, as the backup.
The problem with SAS is just an inconvenience. My IT guy swears by Advanced System Care, been using it for 3 years for deep registry scans and optimization, defrag, duplicate file, empty folders and program deletion that MS Control panel misses regularly. I have always used third party software. Lastly and this used to be an axiom, MS is the most popular OS and is thus the major target by far of hackers. I believe they concentrate on this before getting around to Ubuntu or Apple. If anybody is attempting to crack av and antimalware, I would think MSE and WD would be the first on the list. And MS has dropped the ball many times in the past. So don't worry, be happy. I feel safe and secure as I am sure you feel safe and secure, at least as much as we can. Always appreciate your experienced perspective, truly. You can lead a horse to water, etc.
Glenn