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I recently had my hard drive wiped, (don't worry all files were stored on an external)
I figured this was a chance for a fresh start i will raise multiple questions in this thread but i shall start with this one :

From experience how affective is Avast! antivirus?

Still here waiting for any reply ...

Never used it, but will suggest AVG. The new version has link a scanner and a Avg security Toolbar. Link scanner is very helpful when doing Google searches.

sorry i'm on a budget of £0 lol. i was just wondering if i was better of with avast or multiple free virrus scanners and anti ad ware tools

yay Ive just noticed I'm a techspot member now

Avira and Avast are both decent free home user solutions. You just have to manually keep them up to date.

OK, on to the next question how do i find out my Graphics card mem? because i'm thinking of updating

Presently your graphics card states 32Meg, so it would be ideal to update that if your computer is still worth putting money into.

Regarding Avast or Avira
You must have only one Antivirus running (and installed) at a time.

AVG is free also. Updates automatically.

I have ran all three and prefer Avast my self, and the new version will update itself.

well that what i was asking in the last question, im not sure it is 32mb. how do i find out?

Oh and just another question for while you're at it lol:

I have downloaded and installed spore creature creator trial edition
but when i try to run it it comes up with an error message saying " could not create the graphics device. direct x is unavailable [1002]"

Is there a way to fix this? I have contacted spore and i am waiting for reply

How to Download and Install DirectX: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/179113

How to find your System Specs information

my direct x version is 9.0 c with is the one i need to use spore

Found this on the Game forums:

Make sure you have hardware acceleration turned on.
(Go to Properties from the desktop, then click Settings, Advanced, Troubleshoot, and slide the Hardware Acceleration bar all the way up to full.)

If your video card is more than a couple of years old, you are pretty much out of luck. It turns out that Spore Creature Creator uses Pixel Shading 2.0 (which requires DirectX 9.c and full hardware acceleration), and some graphics cards are just plain incompatible with it.

Got to the Directory Windows -> System32 and doubleclick "DXDIAG.exe".
Go to the Display (3rd tab from the left). There should be a field called "DirectX-Functions".
In my case, Direct Draw, D3D and the last one were disabled. I reactecated DDraw and everything jumped to active. Tried to run Spore and other Games and everything works again.

This is off the subject just a little, but there are two other free programs I have found to be very useful and I always recommend them to people whose computers I work on.

CCleaner is very good for clearing your hard disk of unneeded files. I always uncheck the registry, however, as I'd rather have a program like Registry Mechanic take care of the registry.

The other is Lavasoft's AdAware. It picks up quite a bit of spyware.

Along with Avast or AVG, this is good combination to have on your pc.