Which Security Software should I spend my money on?

Kaspersky. Quite simple actually.

 

Hello:

No scanner sw can guarantee 100% clean AFTER you are infected. That you can see for yourself since each time you ran a new AV it found a few more baddies.

So the only way you can get to 100% clean is by reinstalling your Operating System choosing to format the C partition while doing that. You then need to go to the vendor web site and update the os to current security level. Before doing any of this you need to save your user data on a new clean USB or dvd.

Then install your layered defence system as others have already described.

 

Agree with you

BTW when did you changed your setup

 

Paid software is not necesseraly better than free.

With a patched system, one of the well-known free antiviruses (avast! 5 Free, Avira 10 Personal, AVG Free 9.0, Panda Cloud Antivirus, Microsoft Security Essentials) and Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and using your brains you got a great security setup. One thing you should realise is out of the box Windows 7 is way more secure than Windows XP (UAC, DEP, still in development / better support (XP is end-of-life: Microsoft will only make patches for known bugs), way better firewall, Windows Defender included, and disabled Autorun!).

I think there is few traditional security software which deserves to get pay for (in terms of: why pay for it when there are great free alternatives).

Anti-virus/suite: ESET and Kaspersky
Behavioral layer: PrevX
On-demand: Hitman Pro

 

Another vote for DefenseWall. Along with an on demand scanner like Avira, Avast or Hitman Pro and you will be good to go.

 

I agree totally. I was using avast 5 free, Pctools firewall plus and MBAM on my wife's laptop. It was fast, fairly silent and cheap. Can't really go wrong with that.

 

Yup when on Windows XP you indeed can choose out of a bunch of great free firewalls (Outpost, Online Armor, Comodo and PC Tools) on Windows 7 there is no reason for a third-party firewall in my eyes.

 

...but most of them are worse than xp's firewall.
Definitely don't spend money on blacklisting softwares (I only use them for on-demand scanning), those years are over.

 

What are you referring to?