does anyone know any good trial scanners to download online that are effective and free for a period of time. i've tried mcafee which the trial has now expired, know any others????

Go with AVG 7 its free not a trial, but you better make sure that all Mcafee is completely uninstalled and do clean up before you install any other virus protection.

Try Avast! 4 home edition I've been using it for 2 yrs now and works great! It catches viruses as you surf and also up-dates while you surf, without hampering your on-line activity. Best of all...it's FREE!!! If you need a simple solution, try mine. I try to give advise on things that have happened to my PC. Glad to have a chance to help you.

I just downloaded and installed AntiVir, another free antivirus program. I had read good things about the program, so decided to give it a try. Before installing it, however, I did a thorough uninstall of Norton AV (including a registry cleaning of any links to "Norton" and "Symantec"). So far, so good; time will tell whether I stick with this free program, or move onto something else. [BTW, I have read some reviews which stated that AntiVir did not install well on Win XP SP2 PCs, and may even have created some real problems. I loaded it on a Win XP Pro SP2 PC without a hitch.]

Hi ... Take a view at this website below , it will have everything you could need and use http://windowsxp.mvps.org/Scanners.htm

You can dnld NOD32 for a one month free trial, ditto Kaspersky AV, I'm hearing grumbles about AVG free at different sites, I left it for NOD32 m'self. I hear good reports on AVAST! free edition, but you cannot set the free version for regular schedule runs. The skin is kinda weird looking, looks more like a game CP than an AV. But good reports on function. . . Thresher