spyware question?

[LT. Columbo]

i was wondering, i recently discovered how bad my pc was infected with adware and spyware. it has bogged my pc down a lot. any suggestions on a good program i can buy that is a good choice to combat this problem? also a good anti-virus program?
i am upgrading my pc and want to do things right.
operating sys. is xp home edition.

ty.

[cynthia]

Why buy when you can download freeware?

Antivirus: http://free.grisoft.com/freeweb.php/doc/1/
Spyware: http://www.techspot.com/download13.html
Firewall: http://www.zonelabs.com/store/conten...=staticcomp_za

[anonymez]

for adware/spyware, go for "ad-aware" and "spybot search and destry" (both are free)

for a firewall, definately go for zonealarm. it is easily the best, in my opinion. if you don't mind paying, you can upgrade your zonealarm to act as a firewall, anti-virus and other things such as web filtering, ad blocker, history cleaner, etc

[Kiwi†Bird]

SpyBlaster, also free, is good too. It stops certain malicious programmes from being installed on your pc....for example, internet dialers...etc.

For anti-virus, I swear by Avast! It is free, and it monitors a range of activities on your pc like email, p2p programmes, as well as your run of the mill, kill your pc type of virus

Have fun.....

Michaela

[LT. Columbo]

thanx for the advice. it seems my wife bought me norton 2005.
is this any good? also i forgot, what is the best program out there for those blasted pop-ups while on the internet.

i had pop-stopper pro but now some pop-ups are able to defeat it.
ty kindly

[anonymez]

norton 2005 is very good

the best program to stop popups is, in my opinion, "firefox", which is actually a browser with a built-in popup blocker.

anyway, you shouldnt really need a popup blocker, as windows xp sp2 has one built-in to IE

[LT. Columbo]

sp2? i have xp home edition, dont follow sorry.
i have this program called zonealert that is firewall protection and says it stops pop-ups too, just dont know how effective it would be against the pop-ups.

[Bluepointe]

Service Pack 2

[LT. Columbo]

OH YEAH DUH! well i cant upgrade windows cause i have pc probs
but i am getting anew, so i shall get the sp2 upgrade fo sho.

[anonymez]

well, as i said, the built-in popup blocker in sp2 should do just fine...

still, i very very highly recommend you to make the switch from internet explorer to firefox