The McAfee Livesafe I got with this laptop is running out soon, what else is good & maybe free. Something that won’t affect It’s mediocre performance would be good.
Thanks in advance!

Standard Microsoft Defender, or whatever it’s called these days.

Properly uninstall Mcafee so it’s filthy tendrils are nowhere near your machine, switch on the bog standard windows pretection from the control panel and I expect you’ll see improved performance.

What version of Windows are you running and have you kept up to date with the updates? Depending on your answers, the two comments above are probably on the money.

What thepurist said: get Macafee as far away from your machine as possible. Update defender an use that. If you want alternative protection I’d go with Avast free or malwarebytes.

What version of Windows are you running and have you kept up to date with the updates?

10, I’ve mainly kept up to date but on one occasion I had to do a restore cos it was like having dial up again, even when not connected to the interweb.
I’l uninstall McDonaldsAfee & go for Defender, ta.

Windows built in antivirus is good enough now.  Most important is to have a back up mechanism so that if the worst happens (ransomware/machine death) that you can get your stuff back.  For me Office365 rocks as you can just reset your machine back to zero, reinstall apps from online these days (as long as you remember where the install keys/logins are) and get your files back quickly.  That’s more important than AV as no AV will protect you against being tricked into clicking and installing the wrong thing

As above the free Windows Defender. Also if your Windows 10 is recieving Windows updates via the internet there is a Windows ‘Malicious software removal tool’ that installs every month (patch tuesday).

I’ve little to add to the above good advice. Defender should kick in automatically once you purge McAfee.

STW, with the same question four days ago:

New W10-pro laptop – outlook account & do I need protection?

Cheers Cougar, got the idea now.

That’s more important than AV as no AV will protect you against being tricked into clicking and installing the wrong thing

Best practice is not to routinely use an account with admin privileges, that’d go a long way towards protecting against the consequences of promiscuous clicking. It’s a simple and free bit of extra protection but I’d bet hardly anyone on this forum has even set up a non-admin account.

You don’t necessarily need non-admin accounts any more, because the default is that even on an admin account everything runs non-privileged and you get the popup when something needs elevated privs – “Blahblah wants to make changes to your computer”. The only difference between an admin account and non is that you don’t need to enter a password when that prompt comes up. You still need to explicitly allow it.