First and foremost, do not use Internet Explorer. Download Mozilla Firefox and that will solve 99.9% of your spyware troubles.

My fave antivirus is the "ewido security suite", google it. Its ~$30 but they give you a 2-3 week trial with all the options. It's really good.

If you REALLY need to get rid of something, d/l "hijack this" and search google on how to use it, because it's more of an advanced prog

Junk like lavasoft and Spybot is OK but its going to rid your comp of maybe 99% of the spyware, and that last 1% is going to drive you insane.

Oh and before I forget, DONT USE EXPLORER

i use Mozilla after having trouble with explorer. Is it possible to get viruses & spyware while playing LFS online?

Quote from silver bullet :

Oh and before I forget, DONT USE EXPLORER

I concur, you can use Explorer perfectly fine and safe.
But do NOT USE INTERNET EXPLORER!

Quote from jaws99 :

i use Mozilla after having trouble with explorer. Is it possible to get viruses & spyware while playing LFS online?

No, atleast it'd be the first time I heard of such a case.

Quote from jaws99 :

i use Mozilla after having trouble with explorer. Is it possible to get viruses & spyware while playing LFS online?

Not unless you are downloading pornography in the background (using internet explorer).

LOL

i'm never going to use IE again!

Quote from jaws99 :

Does AVG come with a firewall?

the free one doesn't, but you can buy AVG + Firewall off them (what i have atm)

i extremely recommend AVG.it does never slows your pv and its very strong to viruss and trojans.

Quote from jaws99 :

i use Mozilla after having trouble with explorer. Is it possible to get viruses & spyware while playing LFS online?

Quote from silver bullet :

Not unless you are downloading pornography in the background (using internet explorer).

...which is a good enough reason to NEVER use I.E. and use a pr0n manager like Flashget instead

Actually Norton's not so bad, It's just waay waaay over priced and having to pay to get it updated or whatever once a year, I think is just plain wrong.
Anyways, Whatever program you use, the auto scan is ok for most ppl I think, but you should really do it manually and in SAFE mode once in a while.

And watch out for alot of those "free" spyware removal tools or
ones that "specialise" in removing certain malware. I got one program one time that was a trial version. It kept saying no matter what that I had some sort of variant of the malware it specialised in getting rid of. I had three other removal programs that also got rid of the same malware, but they never spotted a thing. It also really wanted me to register (buy) it continuously.

Oh I use FireFox, but am still forced to use ms explorer once in a while
Some of the online TV sites I go to just don't work too good with FireFox

So is he windows firewall ok to use?

Yep, does the job for me :up: Something like the AVG Firewall is probably a good buy for extra peace of mind though.

Which AVG would you recommend as theres quite a few differant options.

if you are using Xp (i bet) : http://www.free-av.com/down/wi ... orkstation_win7u_en_h.exe

Try AVG Free from here and see if you like it :up:

I have found that Windows Defender is quite good.

isn't bad, only free spyware thingy that does active protection for free, but i'd rather use Ad-Aware, as M$ and their beta's leave a baaaaad taste in my mouth!

PS - Defender is NOT an anti-virus, merely an anti-spyware tool!

i dont have any anti virus on my computer. i havent had a problem yet.

I use AVG free, and manually do a virus scan about once every 3 weeks or so, that way it's not hogging system resources. Also, there's a cool little program called Crap Cleaner, which tidies up your registery and gets rid of useless junk files from your computer which build up over time. It's very speedy and very easy to use. Since I reinstalled Windows XP, I haven't bothered about installing any adware/spyware type progs (should really get round to that), but I hear Ad-Aware and The Cleaner are pretty good picks. Tweakguides.com has a lot of useful advice on this kindof stuff, especially to be found in the 'XP tweaking companion', the site owner's free online guide.