Ad-Aware and Spybot redundant?

[mwalimu]

I've been working with one of the experts to get a computer cleaned up (and if at all possible I'll postpone changing anything per the discussion below until that's completed).

The computer is several years old, has 448M of memory (an attempt to upgrade one of the 256M memory chips to a 1G was unsuccessful; either the motherboard doesn't recognize DRAMs larger than 512M or it's very particular about the memory chipsets it will recognize). It's running Windows XP SP3 Home Edition.

It currently has both Ad-Aware and Spybot S&D on it, and currently both install their memory resident extensions (AAWService/AAWTray and TeaTimer respectively). Since this computer is memory constrained, I'm wondering if it would still be adequately protected if it ran only one or the other, not both, at least in resident mode, and if so, which is the better one to keep. For that matter, is it a good idea in general to have both of these boot-loading and memory resident at the same time? I've been running both on another computer for some months now and they've gotten along fine, but that computer has a lot more memory to work with. I also realize that it's probably a good idea to keep both (plus MBAM) for running periodic foreground scans, at least unless one refuses to NOT load on startup.

The computer in question also currently has AVG 9.0 on it, which according to some sources is a resource hog, so I'm planning to uninstall that and install Avast or Avira instead. I'm leaning toward Avast, but any suggestions on which of the two would be better in this situation would be appreciated

[YoKenny1]

I do not use Ad-Aware nor Spybot S&D since using MBAM.

Try Crucial System Scanner tool:

http://www.crucial.com

Use the output to take to a local PC store to see if they can order the RAM for you.

That's what I did for my XP Pro system and its now almost as fast as the Windows 7 system.

I like avast! V5 as the Free version has a small pop up advising about the definition update where Avira Free has a Full Page advertisement pop up with definition updates.

[mwalimu]

Does MBAM (free edition) include a resident Adware monitor, or do I have to get the full version to have that feature?

The crucial link confirmed that the particular brand and model of the computer only supports memory modules up to 512M.

[noknojon]

Hi -

The free version of MBAM has no "active scanner" as such - It is an 'on demand' scanner - The paid version has a resident "active" scanner and "updater" - If you do use MBAM then I would advise to not use any other resident item such as TeaTimer etc. (We prefer this item to be unchecked at most times) - I no longer use S/bot or AdAware any more, but I added SUPERAntiSpyware instead - The load from the 2 items you have installed on small system will slow you down quite a bit - I always check that I have MBAM updates every morning and do a Quick Scan, just to be sure -

Version 3922 was the update for me in Australia this morning -

Thank You -