Help resolving host

[emjay]

Then I'll be unprotected (I realise the irony  ) Seriously... should I turn it off?... then I'd have no anti-virus

The point of antivirus is to keep your computer running smoothly.  However, 90% of the time, the thing screwing up your computing experience IS the antivirus.

I personally recommend some light antivirus, but prefer just to reinstall or rollback Windows every couple of months.  Nothing feels nicer than a squeaky-clean new Windows.

Yeah... tell me about it I've never liked the notion of it anyway... that you have to use probably more than 50% of your computer's resources constantly scanning objects against an ever-growing database of virus definitions... so essentially a brute force approach that will only ever get slower as the database of virus definitions can only ever get bigger. I know there's not much else they can do but nonetheless it just feels like such a massive and exponential waste of resources... that there's got to be a better way. And now, thanks to you guys, there are a lot of suggestions of that better way... but with the main one being fuck Kaspersky Which I've pretty much decided to do, especially after this little stunt of theirs.

In the past it would have been a family decision - because we have a three-user license for Kaspersky - but now my dad hardly ever uses Windows anymore and has even managed to get my extremely technophobic mum over to Linux... and not only that but also to actually liking it and not wanting to go back... I never thought that would happen in a million years but I'm so proud of her for it, and still can't stop pinching myself thinking it's not real. So now I'm the only one left using Windows so we've just decided that we'll go our separate ways with AV... they'll switch to a free one for their two occasional use Windows installations, and it's up to me what I do... yet to decide but got a lot of options here. One thing's for sure though... I don't want the overkill that is Kaspersky or any other always-running security suite like that... perhaps it's time to see what my computer is really capable of without that drain on its resources So either something lighter... I'm thinking probably AVG, or switch to Linux and be done with AV forever!... I'm gonna have to do that anyway in 2020 when Win 7 support runs out and apparently MS is being sneaky again and messing with the update process for Windows 7, trying to let's say 'encourage' upgrading to Win 10 I tried that but it didn't work for me... saw all of about 20 seconds of the Win 10 desktop before it consistently froze.

Or I could try one of your more novel (to me, I mean) suggestions... rollling back every few months... that does appeal actually because my previous laptop - a Samsung - had some pretty cool integrated features for reverting back to a system image and I was very happy with that and used it quite a lot. I haven't tried it from Windows itself though. Then there's Magi's suggestion of dispensing with AV altogether and setting some particular settings, addon's, whatever and then doing an external virus check every now and then from presumably something like a boot disc. That also seems pretty cool. And then there's BG's solution... it looks a bit complicated for me but thanks for the suggestion One thing's for sure... I do want a paradigm shift in my thinking regarding AV and how it should be used because things like Kaspersky are, and always have been, a pain in the arse