Done with AVG free......need something new.

 Spent 2-3 hours last night getting rid of a "rootkit-zeroaccess" virus.........3rd time I've had to use Combo-fix to get rid of a nasty bug on my older Dell Latitude w/XP in the L2-3 years while having AVG as my a-v. I'm ready to use something else, whether it's free or I have to pay for it.

 What's interesting is I think I know where & when it happened. I was out of town playing a golf tourney & was staying at a Days Inn that had wireless internet. My laptop started acting up after that weekend. Seems like when I'm home & working through my FIOS router (wireless) I have no issues. Yes, I have the firewall turned on in the router & my laptop & yes, I have my file sharing turned off on my laptop. So I don't know how much the free AVG really works.

 Anyhow.........suggestions for a good a-v program? Free or not.......

Mugg-

Went from AVG Free to Microsoft Security Essentials and have been reasonably happy -- free also. That and Malwarebytes have done what they're supposed to

 Thanks KQC...........I'll check into that. I have M-bytes on here too. I have Win XP so I hope it's available for it.

I use a combo of AVG, Microsoft Security Essentials, Malwarebytes and Spybot.  Unfortunately, one program doesn't catch everything.

 I hear ya.............I have M-bytes too but it doesn't seem to prevent anything, just finds it when you run a scan. The curious thing about this last bug (rootkit) was that it seemed to attack the AVG (& M-bytes). I started getting pop-ups from windows saying I wasnt protected &, sure enough, when I checked AVG it showed my resident shield wasnt active & my email scanner wasnt active.......even though they were selected to be. I tried to run scans with both a-v's & couldn't.........they just shut down.......& that was after I tried to change AVG to active so I started googling the problem & found the issue in a sort of back door way. I had to uninstall AVG but my laptop wouldn't let me. I had to access some free software online that did it for me. Then I did the combofix & it had me run it twice & reboot twice before it got it all.

 Funny thing is I didn't go to any sites other than Covers when I was away from home. I'm beginning to think that my FIOS routers' firewall is much more effective than I ever thought.

 I have since loaded the Win security essentials & unchecked most of the few exceptions I had in my XP firewall. We'll see what happens next time I go on the road.

We are putting Avast free on the computers that come into the shop now.  AVG went crazy with the 2011 version with the bloatware.

It has a small footprint and does a background scan constantly.

Microsoft Security Essentials and a good firewall