I've noticed that some people tend to have recurring problems - they run out of gas, they overspend on their credit cards, they have problems with kids, they have traffic accidents or ticket problems, etc, . It's not that some people have all of these problems, but rather some people seem to be prone to having recurring problems of one sort or another. This seems to be true of malware infections too. While there can be an element of good/bad luck involved, there's also (in my view) an issue of recognizing when a particular practice leads to an unwanted consequence, then a rational thing to do is to change your actions. Maybe I'm lucky, but my security software and reasonable but not OCD practices avoid malware problems entirely. I don't read about it, follow it, or lose sleep or worry about it. I'm sure future incidents will occur, but prevention is easy and recovery is also easy. Desktop linux use is proposed by enthusiasts but seems to be dead on arrival. The percentage usage is tiny and not growing- if you rounded off, it rounds to zero. Even in enterprise settings where linux expertise is available from IT departments, there seems to be little interest in it.

Yacheryl, I was having a hard time also to find virus protection for a couple of my older computers. I now have "Avast" on my ME laptop (128 ram) and it works great. I put "Avira AntiVir" on the 98 computer and it works fine.

My impressions are based on a limited number of contacts with tech support, but I sense that tech support overseas is harder to communicate with. Part of it is language, part is culture. Overseas tech support seems almost autometronic. They seem to have a script they work from, and if your problem doesn't fit one of their scripts, they can't help. When I asked for help in fixing the problem myself, the only reply he gave me was to ask me to let them take over my computer. And he had no response when I said no. He didn't seem to understand why I refused. And my comment, "There is no way on God's green earth I am giving you access to my computer," didn't resonate with him. This happened on the heels of another tech support call involving my cell phone company. I received an odd e-mail out of the blue from my phone provider that they were going to stop my phone service on a certain date, and when I called, I was told by someone in tech support that they were no longer going to accept payment by PayPal. So I went in to my account to change to another payment method and found myself locked out. I called for help, and they couldn't get into my account. The tech support guy from the phone provider wanted the password for my Paypal account. I refused. And he didn't seem to understand why I would not give it to him. I think someone living in the US would understand this sensitivity on the part of the customer.

I'm not a Windows user so this might not mean anything to you... Since I had never heard of PCmatic, I did a quick search. First, their site's WOT rating, not scientific but... their site is rated 1.5 out of 5. Not good. Yet reading a few reviews leads one to believe their software is the most marvelous thing since butter. Clicking on some of those reviewers, I found their glowing review of this one software to be their only review ever. Which makes me suspicious that their review and probably many of the others are fake. That causes me to lose respect for the company. (that they would use/encourage/buy/whatever fake reviews) (But maybe I just didn't check enough reviewers?) But despite likely fake reviews, it could still be good. Is it? Maybe. I don't know. It seems safe and at least "okay": https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/pc-pitstop-pc-matic As to uninstalling Avast, I don't know but they do offer a special uninstall utility: https://www.avast.com/en-us/uninstall-utility