Originally posted by nihil
Firewall: ZoneAlarm from zonelabs

AdAware( from lavasoft), and SpyBot Search & Destroy.

I totally agree with nihil (not to mention the rest!) about the fact of 'preventative measures' are very necessary. After all, it's better to stop the nasties at the door rather than deal with them later so a good firewall is highly reccommended. ZoneAlarm is probably the best one out there (thats free, anyway ) but there are a few others that are worthy of a look.

As far as AV is concerned, may I reccommend Eset's NOD32. Again, this is one you gotta pay for, but it's well worth it (IMHO). Deep searching but also amazingly fast. Returned a 100% detection rate (providing you keep your sigs updated).

Hope this helps.