Well, he wanted the computer back asap and as it was a Sunday afternoon I didn't have the time to research fully. He originally asked me along to see if I could sort out those annoying messages that had been telling him (for years, presumably) that his computer 'might be at risk'. I knew enough to avoid Norton and McAffee for someone who's not very technical though! Scan now completed and reports no infections - incredible! £25 a year doesn't seem too bad and at least he's protected now.

Post deleted by 12eason

I use Microsoft Security Essentials. It does the job. It's free. It's easy to use. It works with XP, Vista and Win7. Simples.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/products/...

If you did all this yesterday then why post the question today?

I use the AVG free version and have had no issues for the last 2 years.

Am I not allowed to ask what the difference is? I did the download yesterday but activated it and scanned this morning. When I told him about the free or £25 versions he wanted to pay, as he's the old school 'nothing good is for free' category.

A brief product outline here > http://free.avg.com/gb-en/upgrade-free-antivirus

Free anti-virus packages generally work well. Paid-for versions may have bells and whistles such as privacy protection. I moved away from AVG (free) because they made it nag-ware and upgrades quietly defaulted to the paid-for version rather than the free version. I switched as soon as I discovered MSE and haven't looked back.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

Tell him to go and open a Barclays Bank esavings account and he can have Kaspersky free every year via the internet banking portal.

Not bad just for opening an account for £1

And if you don't want a new bank account, there are 3 user one year licences for KIS available on Amazon for £6.

In reply to a post by AEP:

I don't find a need for anything other than Microsoft Security Essentials. It is an excellent product (particularly the latest incarnation now in beta).

My daughters XP got infected by a spambot.
MSE was useless.
In fact nothing I could find would help.
I had to re-load XP.

I find the free Spybot does as good job as anything else, but you do have to keep it up to date.
Regards,
Martin