What is a good regime to employ for anti-virus and anti-spyware detection/removal?

I surf about 20 hours a week; don't do porn and don't go to any "dodgy" sites - not knowingly anyway!

I only get private emails and never open any that I don't recognise.

I could d/l McAfee or similar but I'm not convinced that this is worth it and the delay that it puts on the PC is a pain.

if you are willing to pay for one the best is kaspersky. They come out with more updates per day then any other anti-virus company and also scan for viruses around the world not just known to be prevelant in a certain country.

If you are looking for a free application i would suggest AVG both for antivirus and spyware.

So I have already d/l'd AVG antivirus and AVG anti-spyware - both free versions. But is this enough? And how often to run scans?

This is enough as long as you keep it up to date. I would run scans once a week or setup auto scans to run at certain times when you are not using comp. There are some other spyware tools and some anti virus scans can be run online as an alternative checking tool. trendmicro.com has a free online scan that detects both virus and spyware programs and can be run as a 2nd layer of protection.

Many thanks Mr Kontradictor, I am busy d/l'ing all the programs now as I methodically work my way through the 15 steps that Howard has posted as a sticky on this BB

Another good one is avast! 4 Home Edition. Which is free.

And can be downloaded from HERE.

Regards Jase