conflicting programs?

I am running avast, malwarbytes anti-malware, and ad-aware. Will they conflict at all? Is that all I need? Do I need a registry cleaner? Thanks.

Hi, heavenstobetsy, and welcome to the forum.

Re the “conflicting programs”:
The general rule of thumb is that only one antivirus (resident) is installed at a time. Examples include Avast, Norton, AVG, McAfee etc.
You only have Avast, so that’s OK.

(Proviso: Some AV’s install deeply and need to have a particular tool run to completely remove them. Including Avast, actually, so what was the AV you used prior?)

You can also have one Antispyware running resident (which means realtime - scanning files as they write to the disk.) although you may get away with more than one. And you can have as many demand scanners as you wish to install.
If the scanners you have are the free versions, you’re fine. The free versions are demand scanners. MBAM is particularly good. Another good one is Superantispyware. I would certainly look to replace AdAware with it. (Oh, that’s right, I have. ;D)

You don’t need a registry cleaner. They have their uses, but can sometimes cause problems, and usually don’t speed things up much. Should you choose to try one out, I’d recommend a very safe one, like TweakNow. There is also a slightly more aggressive one built in to Ccleaner, an excellent disk clean program.

Thank you, Tarq. The antivirus I was using previously was the security program that came from my internet provider. I removed it. I really like malwarebytes anti-malware. It was recommended at Geeks to Go as part of their malware/spyware cleaning protocol. I appreciate your responding to my query. :slight_smile:

Yep, MBAM has rapidly grown a very good reputation. (So has Superantispyware.)
If they are the free versions - demand scanners- no problem having one or two. Or three or four if you want. (Probably overkill)
But handy to have something like that already installed if you find yourself in deep doo doos one day.
(Say, from having impaired AV as a result of not running the tool to remove the old one fully. :wink: :wink: ;))
Am I freaking you out at all?

If the previous security program was Norton (Symantec) or McAfee then you will need to completely remove all traces of them as they leave remnants that can interfere with avast!.

Thanks, YoKenny. No, it was neither, just the ISPs own security suite. No other identifying information with it to suggest if it was re-branded with their own name. I will phone and ask.