Getting rid of Spyware

[Mandrake]

After using Vista for many months I now merely rely on Windows Defender and the Windows firewall. They're free and they have a low memory footprint (though I have no idea why I'm concerned about memory usage when I have 8GB ram!) and work very well.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092417 Firefox/3.0.3

[James]

I'm with you, Mandrake. Our computers this past summer came bundled with McAfee Security Suite BUT when the year is up, I'm going in your direction. I think both WD and WF do an adequate job and I also think we've blown this malware/spyware/virus threat way out of proportion. I can't even remember the last time any of my security programs found anything... anything for crying out loud. If we use our common sense and the programs offered by MS with our operating systems, we should be fine.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092417 Firefox/3.0.3

[PaulD]

AVG error may cripple XP.

If you have just downloaded the latest signature update, DO NOT SHUT DOWN YOUR COMPUTER.

See here for a description, and
here for fix and recovery.

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[humpd]

Malwarebytes and Superantispyware are excellent spyware removers and both are free.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091102 Firefox/3.5.5 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)