What would be some good basic protection for free? Im talking virus, adware blocker. All that great stuff.

you should try avast or avira as long as you update it, you should be good protected our patience is big

AVG or AVAST. I would go for AVAST as it has rookit protection. Also download MalwareBytes anti-malware and use it at least once two weeks.

Well I would give Avira a miss to many ff ,s , Avast scans for rootkits but does not really know what to do with them when it finds one , Avast seems to update quicker than AVG free but AVG has Link-scanner and so is safer for surfing , I have , on different machines , both , I still cannot decide which s best SUPERAntispyware : very good a " must have " on any machine Spy Bot S&D : with out tea timer ( easily disabled ) great contribution to the hosts file Malwarebyte's Antimalware : A great product from a small but absolutely dedicated team . As you have a laptop then XP's firewall is not good enough , try PC-Tools firewall , not to heavy , will also work well on windows 7 . And CCleaner to clean up the mess from time to time . Much of this can be found at www.majorgeeks.com on the top freeware picks page .........

http://www.computing.net/answers/se... An updated article from a few years ago. Every point is still valid today. It should be required reading for EVERY new computer user. Every item on the list is FREE! _________________________ Embrace paranoia, they ARE out to get you!