hi froggie lady,

If you are only running one PC in your household and don't use it much for anything but email and internet surfing and other minor stuff.

I would recommend the free anti-virus stuff such as:

AVG free edition:

http://free.grisoft.com/doc/avg-anti.../lng/us/tpl/v5

or AVAST free edition:

http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html

both are a little limited but adequate if you have a little bit of tech know how.

If you want to pay for anti-virus or if you are running multi-PCs in your household through networking. I would suggest either PCillin or Panda anti-virus (you can google those and choose the package that you like)

one thing to remember about anti-virus programs is that you can only have ONE anti-virus on your PC. Anymore than that and it'll give you more problems.

You can download free trials for any of them and give them all a shot to see which you ones you'd like best. I would suggest that anyway because if you suspect a virus. One might not catch it while the other will. Just make sure you uninstall one before downloading another.

Another thing to DEFINITELY do is to make sure you UPDATE anything you've downloaded to its most current state. If you don't update as soon as you've downloaded, it won't work well.

I would run the free ones in safe mode the very first time you run it. (make sure you are NOT connected to the internet while you are running it in safe mode)

I will post about anti-spy in the next post. Hope this helps