I just purchased Avast Internet Security and VPN. I also have Malwarebytes and C-Cleaner installed and want to know if either of these programs are still necessary or should I uninstall?
I personally haven’t had Malwarebytes find anything relevant in several years.
Avast doesn’t only check for virus, rootkits and, trojans. It also blocks general malware.
Ccleaner is used to delete clutter from your system that’s why it’s original name was Crap Cleaner. (Yes, some of us go back that far. )
Malwarebytes has always been good for removing stuff from your PC if anything gets through AVAST but I have to say that apart from files retrospectively re-classed as PUPs (potentially unwanted progams) that has not happened for a long time. However it is still potentially useful to have a backup AV/AM tool, one which does not interfere with your main AV, to scan and recheck a file or whole system for peace of mind.
If it is set to run at startup I’d stop that, waste of resources, but I certainly wouldn’t delete it. Use it as an on demand scanner.
CCleaner, despite AVAST’s fumbling and messing around, almost ruining its well deserved good reputation, is still an important and highly useful, comprehensive maintenance and management tool. Other tool-sets can do what it does but few do it as well and as reliably. It also has, like other Piriform originated software, IMHO, a one of the best designed, noob friendly, unintimidating GUIs you’ll find.
I would not be surprised if those PUPs were mostly Auslogics files.
A few years ago they blotted their copy book when one of their products started installing some of their other products whether you wanted them or not. The opt out did not work apparently and so they received some very bad press.
The result was that all Auslogic software was tainted with suspicion and, as I mentioned earlier, almost overnight retrospectively redefined as PUPs.
I remember doing a full system scan with Malwarebytes and everything was perfect but a couple of weeks later I did the same thing again having installed nothing new and it reported almost a full page of PUPs, all Auslogics files, reg entries etc.
I was not using any of their software at the time but had used their ‘Pro’ Defragger on my old laptop. After that died I’d backed up its HDD to a new PC and an external HDD and it was all that stuff which was now reporting as PUPs.
Even a year on from that I’d forgotten I’d archived some Auslogics’ installers on flash drives and when I did a full system scan with one of those attached suddenly Malwarebytes was reporting them as another slew of new PUPS.