[deanhills]

With my last reformat of my desktop computer hard disk and reinstallation of Windows 7 Professional in 2016, Windows 7 prompted me for installing a few softwares including Microsoft .NET Framework and a few others. Like Windows is quite helpful in prompting what is needed to make software work. I just did what it asked me to do, except when it got to automatic updates. About a year after the reformatting of my hard disk the updates started to screw up some of my tools including the security tools and my VPN. I suspect that some of the updates are also for Windows 10 and since they get bundled together, one doesn't know what one is getting and it's creating a problem for my Windows 7. Easiest for me was just to completely turn the updates off.

My first priority loading software is an anti-virus software - I have Kaspersky, but since Kaspersky has got too big causing my system to slow down, I'm with Microsoft Security Essentials and the free version of Malwarebytes. With my next installation I'm going to try xdude's recommendation for the Comodo Security Suite. I load both Firefox and Chrome browsers. Firefox is for main browser and chrome backup browser. I also need to load IE for Microsoft. I also load FileZilla and GIMP. Then of course Microsoft Office. I use Notepad quite a bit and Notepad++ occasionally. Last but not the least my Pure VPN - which I don't recommend, but since I signed up for 3 years, I'm using it for when I have to use PayPal. When I upgrade my hardware in a couple or so years, I'll probably upgrade to Windows 10 or whatever Windows is the one my new hardware has been designed for. I hope I'll still have a snip tool as I use that a lot.