I had an awful problem with a painfully slow computer. It would take up to 20 minutes to connect to the Internet and, more often than not, I would receive the message that "Your last session ended unexpectedly. Do you wish to return to that page, or do you wish to go to your home page". (Or something along those lines). Whereupon it would take a further few minutes to actually connect.

I tried to cut down on the programs running at startup, but all to no avail, so in desperation, I took the PC down to my local expert's shop who checked it over, sighed, and said "what do you expect with all the programs that are running at startup, using up all of your processing capability?"
He pointed the finger specifically at WinPatrol, AdAware, Spybot, Windows Search, Google Desktop and Google Toolbar, and told me that while I need an AV program (I have AVG) I really do not need any of the others. So, with my agreement, he took them all off, and now the internet loads within a few seconds.

Question is, was he right?

I have certainly changed my modus operandus, in that I don't leave the PC connected to the internet when I do not really need it to be connected, and so far I have had no problems that I can see with the disconnection of the offending programs.

Anyone have any views either for or against his recommendations?

petert

If you had enabled any of the real-time features for Win Patrol, Ad Aware or Spybot - he probably did the right thing.

I have very little experience with those products so I'm not certain if they support real-time monitoring. My Internet Security (Norton 2010) does it all, so that's all I run at startup.



Sure sounds like it (considering that your browser loads in just a few seconds).

WinPatrol - wouldn't be without it - runs in real time, all the time. It alerts you if anything tries to make changes to your startup programs. Plus, managing your startup programs is much simplified with WinPartol. Why AdAware and Spybot would be running at startup, I'm not sure unless you have some of the real-time options in them enabled. Don't know about Windows Search, but Google Desktop also runs in real time, all the time. If you don't need to search your desktop for things you can't fine otherwise, I'd disable it too. It has saved my bacon a couple times though!

Looks that way. I only run anti-spyware programs as needed, one at a time.

If you're really worried about picking up adware/spyware when you browse the Internet, you might want to consider Sandboxie.
http://www.sandboxie.com/