I use an antivirus software called Avast anti virus, there is a free edition which is very good and auto updates. I also use Advanced SystemCare which again has a free version or a paid for version. Both have a very good spyware detector.

The worst software I ever had the misfortune to use was McAfee, it interferes with everything and slows the whole computer so much.

Another antivirsus which I previously used and found to be good was Sophos. Again it had a free version, I don't know what they're like now.

I use AVG, I did have the paid version, but now have a paid version, as I thought my Laptop had a virus as it kept turning itself off, long story but Shaun and Steve sorted me out on here and turned out it was my fan over heating in the end not anything to do with a virus!

I have use Avast in the past and it was fine as well. In addition to my AVG I have Spybot as well (free version), although now I have upgraded my anti virus I probably don't need it now.

I wouldn't use Norton, ended up with a load of viruses the last time I used it which was a few years ago now.

A

-- Edited by Amanda on Saturday 11th of September 2010 10:29:33 PM

Hi Sue,

sorry, missed this one.

I think that it's the case that no single piece of anti virus software is geared up to catch everything.

Nothing against Norton but that was the one that let CoolWebSearch onto one of my machines causing me to have to isolate the machine off that network.

I then replaced Norton with McAffee on everything and the protection seemed better.

I've now changed them all again, this time to to Virgin Media security which I believe is a fancy front end on PC Guard and so far so good.

To keep my eye on things I regularly run Spybot and also have Ad-Aware on the machines. Both of these are free and available from Secure-Networking and Lavasoft respectively.

For Ad-Aware go here : http://www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php

And for Spybot go here : http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/

They've both been around for at least ten years and have regular free updates. Try not to be too alarmed when you run spybot for the first time and see how wide open your system actually is.

My ex (that jobs still open by the way when you fancy running away with me!!!) ran it and found 700 bits of spyware lurking in the recesses of her machine!

I really believe that absolutely everyone should have Spybot at least on their machines. Just run it and you'll see what I mean!

Always ensure that where you download your free software from is the legitimate vendors site as the last thing that you want is to be downloading a virus with the software.

right, off to watch a film now with my boy before popping back to sunny Edinburgh,

Have fun and talk soon,

Shaun.

for speed, cost and security i fine:

Avast free home AV,

Comodo firewall,

Microsoft security essentials

Malwarebytes anti malware.

I leave the firewall on all the time as with real time protection from Avast and MSE. Then run a quick scan on avast, MWB and MSE every few days and full scans as and when I feel its required, I love this set up as it seems to be very effective and does not hinder my PC speed too much and it runs on well on 1gig of ram.

I aslso use the same set up for my laptop. I dont use the windows built in firewall so I could not say how effective that is.

I would recommend malwarebytes anti malware. its brilliant and has solved many a problem for me, friends and work colleagues.

for Anti Virus, have a look at F-Secure. does the job and covers internet, email, realtime scanning etc.. and also has a small footprint on your PC's resources so you hardly notice its there.

Also has parent password protection and stuff heh heh.