that's not to say that an extra layer of obscurity on top of security is a bad thing...

I use Spybot Search and Destroy, MalWareBytes, and ad-aware.

I also use adblock plus and noscript on my firefox for extra protection against spyware.

I turned off all my built in windows security (windows defender, UAC) and uninstalled the norton shit (first thing I did when I got lappy),it was "factory default", including the Google Toolbar.
stupid security was so tight I couldnt do anything..

I also use Avast. (had to tweak the real-time shields)

for system performance, I use atf cleaner and TuneUp Utilities 2010..tuneup does a good job at keeping my lappy clean of useless junk (temp files that are not really temp, windows update backups (damned shit wasted my harddrive space), cache stuff, etc.

whatever ATF doesnt clean, tuneup does..

Just to remind you, discussion of illegal things like cracking and pirating is generally frowned upon (and why would you want to publicize the fact that you do that, anyway?).

Windows Defender is fine in my opinion, but I'm with you on UAC.

On the subject of UAC, does that mean you also set gksu to remember your root password forever, because that is essentially what disabling UAC does. :/ Its there for a reason guys. WinXP was not sercure by default, they finally fix it and what do people do, disable it.

Well my brother's computer just got hit with a major infection a day after installing Avast! and the program did nothing to even hamper it. Even running a boot scan couldn't get rid of it, all it could do was ignore it, making the program as effective as Norton, McAfee, and every other POS AV I've used. Right now I'm running an in-depth scan in safe-mode, but I doubt I'll get anywhere. Next up on my list of defenses is ComboFix, the only AV I've ever used(besides NOD32) that actually does it's freaking job...

It sounds like the problem was the computer was already infested beyond repair before you installed an antivirus. There's no point installing a piece of antivirus software after the computer is already infected; that's like closing the barn door after the various livestock have already escaped. You have to install the antivirus from Day 1, plus of course follow safe browsing habits, don't click on random email attachments, and don't insert the USB drive of everyone in your school into your machine, for antivirus protection to be effective.

It depends on the AV program, Spybot S&D which has a very minimal real time aspect is very effective at clean up even after a computer has been infected, though you sometimes need to do some manual intervention for it to clean everything up perfectly.

True, but I don't consider Spybot to be an antivirus program as much as an anti-spyware program (and a nice /etc/hosts blackholer). Wouldn't you agree that my statement is a good run of thumb, though?

I didn't see any infection until after I installed Avast, and I had AVG before that. It doesn't matter though, Combofix got rid of everything, and Avast is blocking infections again. Thanks for the concern though.

Cheers, glad you got it in good working order. Personally, I blame AVG for missing existing problems, but there's probably no way to know for sure.

Over the several past years, I have fixed multiple computers whose anti-virus software had failed to protect them. And on multiple occasions, what fixed the computer was not the usage of another AV, it was me going through tools such as msconfig, ProcessExplorer and Autostart, and hunting files with a weird name in select directories of the disk. Once, Blacklight found a file with rootkit behaviour, so I told the computer's owners, "reinstall it entirely" because one cannot trust an OS installation (be it Windows, Linux, MacOS X or others) that got rootkitted.
Every time I found a file with a fishy name and an executable signature, I sent the file to VirusTotal... and every time, the results were appalling. I distinctly remember that the "best" result (the highest detection rate) was a 16/36 detection rate, but I got something as low as 2 AV of the whole VirusTotal farm labelling a virus as such...

Free AV software is immensely better than paid AV software, not because it works significantly better or worse than paid AV (all AV software, free or paid-for, suck), but because using the free ones reduces the high amount of money that the big players of the paid AV industry keep racking (billions of dollars per years !) with their deficient and ineffective software.

Are you by chance a member of the Anti-Sec Movement that took over Imageshack last year?

Those sound like misguided gray-hatters that have turned into black-hatters to me. I seriously doubt that Lionel is among their ranks.

See for me Spybot Search and Destroy is just all those tools combined in one nice and easy to use package.