Must I uninstall other spyware programs?

[Guest]

Sofar I have been using Ad-Aware SE Personal, Spybot Search & Destroy and
Spyware Blaster to handle spyware. Do I have to uninstall these programs
before I install Defender and is Defender doing everything these other
programs do? I had tried Microsofe Antispyware some time ago but got a huge
log file that disabled a proper defragmentation of the harddisk in the end
and also led to other errors that made me get rid of it. I am glad if you can
answer me the above question that I can handle install and use accordingly.
Thanks,

 

[Guest]

No, you don't have to uninstall the other spyware programs to run defender.
Their all basically doing the same thing. Except defender runs all the time
in the back ground, with real time protection. So, if you get infected and a
program tries to install itself or auto start you're notified right away,
instead of having to do a scan to find the change. Also, defender will detect
a program that "changes" itself and notifies you of the program/change. They
all don't detect everything so the more programs you have and the more you
scan the safer you will be.

 

[NewScience]

It all depends on whether or not the other programs ALSO have a real-time
protection feature.
You shoul not have two or more programs conflicting with each other
providing you real-time protection.

Also, if any of them have Automatic Scan features, I'd turn one of them on,
and manually scan with the others.

 

[Bill Sanderson MVP]

Sorry for the log file problem with the earlier beta. This has been fixed.
There are no known conflicts with other antispyware programs. They do
advise turning off real-time protection from antivirus programs during the
installation--but my advice would be to try the install directly first, and
only do that process if you have any trouble.