Need help with antivirus/fierwall programs

[Fred]

I recently bought a new computer with XP-home that was preloaded with
Norton Antivirus. I added McAfee Personal Firewall available from my
cable company.

The "free" time on both of these is expiring soon, and I need help
getting a permanent set of programs in place. I looked at using the
Internet Security programs from Norton and McAfee, but both
require extensive operations on deleting all current security
programs as well as dealing with registry entries.

How likely is it to screw up these operations? Is it better simply to
renew the 2 programs I'm using--which seem to be doing their work just
fine--and forget about the other features that the suites offer? Also,
the user reviews of both the Norton and McAfee suites on CNET are
really bad--and scary.

I've seen other antivirus programs mentioned here, like AVG, but do
are there any good antivirus programs that don't require cleaning out
all the other security programs now in my computer?

I'd appreciate any comments on these issues.

Thanks.

 

[Bill]

I'd appreciate any comments on these issues.

Under no circumstances should you be using two on-access scanners at
once. Although having multiple on-demand scanners is fine (but
unnecessary), only one on-access scanner should be enabled.

As for other program options, the PC rag reviews are meaningless. Read
the competent, independent reviews such as Virus Bulletin, University
of Hamburg and a few others.

Although either of the products that you use are adequate, there are
better ones. My personal preference is Kaspersky Anti-Virus due to
it's extremely high detection rates. Especially with trojans.

There are a couple of free scanners, but as the saing goes, "You get
what you pay for".