[Rockingham]

Good recommendations, and in addition to AdAware and SpyBot, I suggest the following freebies:

(1) Sygate Personal Firewall, both the software and the online security scans.
http://smb.sygate.com/

(2) SpywareBlaster
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html

(3) Panda Software's on line antiviral scan
http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan/com/activescan_principal.htm

(4) Mozilla Firefox browser
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

Learn them, use them, and keep them updated. It does not take much of a slip up to get a nagging problem. My brother prefers Explorer to Firefox, and his computer intermittently goes haywire due to a virus. Even removing the virus did not cure the problem, so I am probably going to have to lead him through a re-installation of XP or at least the SP2 update over the holidays.

[Capitalism2003]

good stuff...I forgot about Spywareblaster. It's nice to know you can get these things for free. Next time I buy a new computer, the first things on it will be this power combo:

Spybot + Ad-Aware + Spywareblaster + AVG Antivirus + Sygate Firewall.

Great security/privacy/anti-spyware/antivirus package, and it costs $0.00

can't beat it!:)