Agree just leave AVAST for now since you have it on and it is running well you are good there with an active Antivirus program. What I suggest people do with Avast is to set up the scanner in screen saver, go to your screen saver settings area and select Avast screensaver from the list, in Advanced you can select which screen saver to have it use while Avast scans. Save your settings then anytime your pc goes to screen saver it will start scanning, when it is interrupted it stops then starts where it left off the last time etc, works great. As Zep said AVAST is constantly scanning so you really don't have to do scans like you do with others. I would go with the windows firewall it is a decent firewall. But if you want to use zone alarm since you have it that is fine but you do have to turn off the windows one like zep gave directions for. You have the same programs I use, malwarebytes, superantispyware, spywareblaster, update weekly and do scans. That first AVAST scan does take a long time to run and yes windows 7 is a large program so you will have a lot of files to scan. You are applying a very good layered protection on your pc. Just remember to also use the secunia software inspector to keep all programs updated too.

owbist, Thanks, it was just me being stupid, not reading what was before my eyes. Yes, Microsoft's Windows Security Manager did show a firewall was on, and it was/is Zonealarm. I didn't expect MS to be so open as to say some FW other than theirs was active. I'm at a meeting and grumbled to my neighbor at the table, he looked over and said: "it says Zone Alarm is on".

Hi Mikie, It is just the plain Norton Antivirus, no bells or whistles. In other words I do not have the Security one. In 2008 I was told it didn't have a firewall and later found out that it did. I just booted up tonight and the shield did not pop up at all and so the windows firewall is on. What I did was do a check disk and a defrag and now it is not popping up. That was weird. Still I think Norton might have had something to do with it as they have been known to have a firewall and not state it on the box. I know it is not good to have two firewalls going at the same time but since they do this stuff and don't inform the public I can't be sure if they changed their minds on this version and put one in with their updates. That is if they can do that. The intrusion prevention says that it automatically blocks internet attacks aimed at taking advantage of vulnerable programs. Detects and prevents attacks from threats already on an infected computer. It has antivirus, antispyware, advanced protection which says Intelligently monitors processes in real time to detect suspicious behavior and emerging threats. Uses Nortons SONAR technology. It has email message scanning and Norton Insight, which speeds up the scanning process and increases computer performance by identifying trusted files that do not need scanning. I just ran it and it says trusted 86 percent and scanning 14 percent. It also catches trojan horses like last year. It is a lot more fancier looking than 2008 and is very impressive looking but like you said I agree that they keep people in the dark about their product. It shows on the list of not having a firewall but their security one does have a firewall. Since they block incoming stuff that made me wonder about the firewall being stopped by Norton. Do they are do they not have some type of firewall and they call it something else. Your guess is as good as mine. ??????? thirdfrt!!!

Thanks for that! jerry nj