Bit concerned, how are the above affected by/affects Windows XP Home?, I've looked into all three;-
[1] Ad-Aware installed, I activate it 2 or 3 times a week, & it finds on average 8 to 12 items to "quarantine" each time, ALL low risk, no high so far,[ on one of your member's advice, I quarantine all] I notice that some are M/Sost items, how possible is it that quarantining ANY might be linked with essential programme components, & what exactly does quarantine do/mean?
[2]Looked at Mail Washer on your advice, & printed off details, it seems "iffy" as regards Windows XP Home [good ol' XP!] I am still getting loads of these Male Hormone Cream, ads, this morning alone I got twelve!, & am very anxious to get rid, & hope that Mail Washer will help, but only if it does "agree" with XP.
[3] Finally Mc Afee Virus Scan 7.0 2003 version, I have the disc, & again it says, in effect "if you have XP, & it doesn't load, do this, do that etc, I don't want complications, XP can be a real pain, because of iy I've given up trying to install games from discs, some it just completely ignores, no CD drive action, when I do a search they are there, but I still can't install, one even went through the Wizard, & gave me an icon, but STILL I couldn't play it!
Thanks for reading this guys, [always in trouble aren't I?] just hope I don't get in bother for grouping all this in one post.

Maurice,
do you have any Antivirus program installed at all? And is it running every time you startup your PC?
Seems you get all your viruses/naughties coming in with that unsollicited spam.

Quarantaining files means, that they are not allowed to do anything in your PC (Like Go directly to Jail, Do not pass GO and dont collect £200.-, stay in Jail until it is your turn again/let you out of quarantine).

I hope someone else will help you with Mailwasher. I am fortunate in that I have never ever received any spam at all, so I don't need programs like that (always been careful with my email-address, and I have only 1, the same since 5 years).
Adaware alone does a respectable job, but on top of that you should D/L and install Spybot Search and Destroy
http://www.safer-networking.org/index.php?page=download
After installation, do the program update (as in Adaware) and run it.

If you currently have any Antivirus installed, uninstall it first, before you install McAfee. If the CD does not start by itself, click on Start/Run and then on Browse. Go to your CD and select Setup.exe to install it.

Maurice,

I use MailWasher with XP Home with no problems. I use my email in outlook express only to correspond with people I know. I do get the occassion spam, but mailwasher seems to handle it OK. I use Hotmail for all my other email requirements. I get a great deal of spam there, but if it gets too bad, I can always just cancel that address and start a new one.

Jeff

Your best bet is SpyBot. It will find more than AdAware ever will.

I use Grisoft for virus
Norton's and Mcaffee are system hogs
Never had a virus- not even a coldsore and I download tons of stuff

McAfee 7 runs flawlessly on mine....version 7 is much more system friendly than past incarnations.....and that's on XP Pro.

As far as Ad-Aware, it also runs very well on that machine. I keep Spybot as a backup, but with the latest Ad-Aware it seems it's not found anything additional so I'm trusting Ad-Aware for now.

My Irish friend; Yes, I have Norman AV, [no, not Norton] yes, I guessed quarantining meant just that, tthought they might have another meaning, I've had it for about 15 months, I d/loaded it, & it seems OK, as I have the Mc Afee disc, I just wanted a comparison of the two, I understand that the Mc Afee has a firewall built-in, the Norton has not. Incidentally the "Mc" disc cost me just under £8 from a website!
I will look up "Spybot", thanks,

Thanks jshields13, glad to know that MailWasher works with the blessed XP, I shall stick to Outlook Express only, never used anything else.
Referring to [2], in my original message, the snag with those "ads" is that they ALL have different email addresses, so I'm wondering how MailWasher will cope with that, although I understand that it holds all until I say yes, but I'd rather it got rid.
Masque, glad to know that Mc 7.0 & AdAware are both OK on Pro, a friend installed Pro for me, but I uninstalled, as it seemed to cause problems for me.
Godataloss, that's interesting.

Thanks all, a great response, as usual, TS gives me the impetus to keep going.

If you want some more comparison material and up-to-date on AntiVisrus stuff, check this out.
It is a private server, so perhaps not always available and it might be slow on a dial-up.
However, well worth it!
http://www.virus.gr/english/fullxml/

Wow, Dubliner, what a site! www. virus etc., thanks a lot!! just had a quick peep, shall go back & register, definitely. All free too, looks the bees knees!, much obliged. [have put in on Favorites]
Got there very quickly too, in spite of your warning, which isn't the norm on my laptop, connection speeds vary a lot, according to traffic, usually, of course. Perhaps that site has developed since you last used it
Cheers, I'll let you know how I get on.

Maurice,

As long as each email address is different, I don't think there is any way to eliminate the spam automatically. Even though the address appear different, it would not suprise me to learn that they actually come from the same source. Mailwasher will "bounce" back messages when instructed to do so. The sender then gets a message that your email address is no longer good. Hopefully, the sender will get the message and erase your address from his system.

How about acquiring another email address?
Get one for free (with my ISP) at www.u.tv (a.k.a. www.utvinternet.com)

spybot : search and destroy is also very good at getting rid of annoying pop-ups and security glitches whilst online. lets you immunize your system aswell

I am starting to lean towards Spybot (everything Adaware finds, Spybot finds and then some - in my personal experience on my systems).

Same here, after the intitial run of SpyBot, it hardly ever finds anything, because I always run Ad-aware first.
But, I also use MyIE2 as my browser and it does an excellent job of blocking this stuff, and I hardly ever see anything show up in Ad-aware/SpyBot.