For most people these programs will solve so many issues you might be supprised!

Anti virus.
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/5390/lng/us/tpl/v5 (AVG free with free updates)


Anti spyware.
www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html (spybot search and destroy)

www.hijackthis.de Download from direct download link. (more for the techno geeks)

www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/ (ad-aware se)


Firewall.
www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/products/trial_zaFamily/homeofficetrial_zaFamily.jsp?dc=12bms&ctry=GB&lang =en
(zonealarm) just select the free edition!

Clean-up tools.
www.ccleaner.com/ (amazing piece of software and free!)


Things you should do at least once a month (minimum!)
1> Disc cleanup or use ccleaner
2> Defrag your hard disk (found under system tools in start menu)
3> Check for viruses Update anti virus software.
4> Check windows update for updates and patches.

These are things you should do, but most of us dont even know what they are or why they are there! ( you know who you are! )

Feel free to comment on my advice as i live by this and my pc still runs sweet as a nut!

My main advice to you all is never click links in emails go to the site by manually typing the site into your browser!
Sooo many spoof emails about it's hard to tell the real ones from the fakes!

Any more reccomendations ?

Ah well thats me done for now have fun.

 

that will create issues

rest is sensible advise

 

my 2p worth

firewall: id go for the hardware variety whenever possible, but as above zone alarm is tidy, windows sp2 firewall does the job also.

Hardware types, AVOID Belkin and Safecom whatever you do. Linksys, Netgear, D-Link, Billion etc have thier respective fans and can be hit or miss, higher price bracket Draytek are decent. If you have more money than sense.....Cisco 87x series

anti-virus: Nod32, Kaperspy

spyware: as above plus spyware doctor, microsoft one

disk utilities: disk keeper 10 runs nicely on my machine

 

I must admit i have windows defender running aswell! but not really tested it yet.

 

my only gripe with that at first was, it was very intrusive, alterting every minor thing, but detection wise it does seem good.

 

For making windows disks

www.nliteos.com
http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp
http://www.driverpacks.net/
http://www.msfn.org/
http://www.ryanvm.net/msfn/

decent tools off the top of my head:

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ Barts Pe, awesome with all the plugins, especially with ghost 8.2. Then extract the Bashrat network driver pack (link above) into the network drivers bit and you can ghost pretty much any machine over a network

 

Why? AVG is a decent AV

 

Sorry...i must disagree


http://www.av-comparatives.org/

http://www.software-antivirus.com/pr...us-review.html

 

i disagree with the safecom router, mine runs absolutely spot on no issues whatsoever. (do have a modded bios on it though that opens up a few extra options)

Had problems with avg myself causing system problems, also with fresh installs it has caused problems, I find Mcafee works well for me, worth paying for. Norton on the other hand I find slows the system down to a crawl, I hate it

There are a few registry cleaners about as well, but in the wrong hands they can cause more problems than they solve

 

Thats why i didnt reccomend any of them!

 

nice list mate but i would stay away from avg unless you know how to uninstalll the damn think lol