"madgardener" wrote in message
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"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
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"madgardener" wrote in message
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yep, but I WILL find the proper program and clean this machine.

Good idea. In terms of program which use the smallest amount of resources
all day long, your best bet is just a plain vanilla anti-virus product,
not one of the all-in-one security suites. I use Norton Anti-Virus
because my company wants me to. But, lots of people are happy with a free
program called AVG - search for it. Get it. Read the instructions for
anything you don't understand and make sure it's working.
I HAVE AVG, it runs automatically, updates all the time and is the reason
my e-mails take so long to come in and go out because it's searching for
viruses. I've had AVG now for almost 3 years...............

For spyware, you should be using two programs which only run when you
tell them to: Spybot and Adaware. They're both free. Sometimes one
catches a nasty that the other one missed, hence the reason for both.
After they do their job, you shut them off like any other software.

I have both of those and ran them last night and caught spyware but no
viruses. I've had those programs for over 4 years............upgrade them
all the time and run it constantly.

Those two programs are not designed to catch viruses. That's why you need
something like AVG, which runs all the time in the background. After you
install it, be sure to shut OFF the email scanning. Two reasons: First, it
can cause some serious problems with Outlook Express. Second, it's
redundant. All files are scanned when they are saved to the hard disk, the
AVG would still spot trouble at that point and stop it.