Keep or kill?

I have a load of security software on my comp. I'm also a bit short of space on my 'C' drive. I'm willing to bet that some of this stuff isn't necessary.

The 2 programs I think might be unnecessary are Adaware and SpywareBlaster. Adaware, at this point, seems almost useless - Spybot does just about everything that it does, only better. SpywareBlaster, though... Well, Spybot has an Immunize function, but I doubt it's as effective. My guess is that I should keep it.

I'd like to hear other opinions, though. Any advice?

 

Hard decision I like both apps. But I like spywareblaster because of the proactive approach.

 

I like them all together myself as well. Anyway, if it's hard drive space you want, none of these apps are gonna help you much. SpywareBlaster's folder on my pc is less than 2.5 MB, Spybot is just over 9 MB, and Ad-Aware just over 4 MB. Really not taking up much space, IMHO.

 

Pigman,

Deleting files in your Temp folder (as the name suggests, only files used temporarily by applications should go here, but many do not bother to tidy up afterwards) and emptying your Recycle Bin would be good first steps to free up disk space (if you have not already done them).

Running a utility that displays disk space taken by each folder would be the best move here to identify the applications that are taking the most space. You could right-click on each folder in Windows Explorer and select Properties... to get this information but using such a utility will make this much easier (DiskPie may be worth a try if you can tolerate ZiffDavis' website popup and popunder tricks...).

 

(Paranoid2000: I empty my recycle bin soon after trashing things, and regularly clean up the temp folder.)

Hmm... Looked at C -> properties, and I have about 200 megs left. Maybe I'm not so short on space.

I also have a mostly empty 3-gigabyte 'D' drive, but the reason it's mostly empty is that Scandisk says it's full of bad clusters.

 

Try reformatting it (taking a copy of any important files first) - you may have a corrupted file system. If the errors persist then it may be a faulty disk (and if it is a single disk with multiple partitions holding your C: drive as well, back up all the important data there).

If you use Windows 9x/ME then XXCopy is a handy free utility which can make a full copy of a partition (see Cloning the Win9x system disk using XXCOPY for specific details). For Windows 2000/XP I would recommend Drive Snapshot or Acronis TrueImage which can backup a full partition (even a system one) and restore it to another disk. Neither are free but both have trial downloads (in Snapshot's case, the download has time-limited backup and unlimited restore capability - can't comment on TrueImage).

 

I've never gotten any errors; scandisk just says that D drive has a lot of bad clusters. There's no data in bad clusters, because (due to the bad clusters) I don't ahve much in D drive.

 

Reformatting may get rid of bad clusters - but if they persist then it is an indication of a failing disk.

 

Ah. Thanks for the info.