OT: Anti-virus / firewall solutions

[Renegade 13]

My Norton anti-virus subscription ran out a couple days ago, and, for various reasons, I'd rather not renew my subscription. So, if anyone has any suggestions for how I can remove Norton (as I've heard it can be rather resistant to removal) from my machine, I'd be greatly appreciative.

I'd also like to get some suggestions for some better anti-virus products, and also some ideas on a good (hopefully free) firewall to use, since I'm not horribly comfortable having my machine completely unprotected from any malicious activities. Again, any suggestions anyone has to offer would be more than welcome, hopefully I can get some sort of consensus on the best products to use, or the best combinations of products to use.

Thanks!!

[Ed Kolis]

I'd recommend Avast for your virus protection...
http://www.avast.com/

Download the home edition - registration is required, but free!

As for firewalls, I've been perfectly happy with the built-in XP/Vista firewall, so I wouldn't know what to get there

I'd also recommend running Spybot Search & Destroy every so often to clean up any spyware, ads, etc. that may have accumulated on your machine.
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

Remove Norton for good? Well, if add/remove programs doesn't do the trick, I suppose you could search the registry, but I'm not sure what exactly to look for... heck, maybe Spybot might consider Norton to be spyware now if it's really that hard to remove!

[capnq]

I bought this computer used from a friend who's a certified Network Analyst. I'm currently running what she installed and set up on it, which is AVG Free Edition for anti-virus, and the version of Windows Firewall that came with Windows XP Professional.

[Fyron]

Symantec provides a Norton removal tool.

The built-in XP "firewall" is completely worthless, since it doesn't stop outbound connections (inbound connections should already be blocked at the router level). Vista's is good though, as it is actually a real firewall.

Ars Technica recently posted a security app guide. Check it out.

[AgentZero]

I use Comodo as a firewall, and haven't bothered with anti-virus in some time. I've used Norton, Mcafee, AVG & Kapersky at various points, and as far as I can remember they've detected two "viruses" though both turned out to be false positives. So now I just don't bother. I run online tests now & then and always come up clean. I stopped bothering with anti-spyware/adware recently as well, after I realized that all the "spyware" that S&D and AdAware were coming up with was all just cookies from the likes of Doubleclick.

And if Doubleclick wants to know what I'm Googling that badly, I don't really care enough to stop them. I'm sure they'll appreciate the irony of seeing "Ad blocking extensions" in there somewhere.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

I use Avast and avg for virus-scanning and Spybot for spybots.

[Baron Munchausen]

Plain old AVG seems adequate. The various ratings sites say it isn't that effective, but it seems to work for an awful lot of people. Avast and CLAM AV are good free options, as well.

http://free.grisoft.com/
http://www.avast.com/
http://www.clamav.net/

The built-in XP firewall is sure better than nothing but it is rather limited. I use Ghostwall because it's very small and lightweight, but does give some extra functionality over the default XP firewall.

http://www.ghostsecurity.com/ghostwall/

[Fyron]

The XP firewall is worse than nothing because it gives you false confidence about being protected.

[Atrocities]

AVG all the way. http://free.grisoft.com/

[Baron Grazic]

eEye Blink Personal Free Antivirus Software.
Its firewall can be a bit harsh by banning older applications, but has worked for me.
Baron Grazic