[LennonCook]

Originally posted by Bungleau: 1. AdAware -- www.lavasoft.de -- free version of spyware and malware remover 3. ZoneAlarm -- www.zonealarm.com -- free version of firewall

I would aim to forget that those two even exist. [img]smile.gif[/img] Ad-aware isn't near as good as it used to be: it has been completely eclipsed by Spybot. ZoneAlarm Free is full of scary but meaningless warnings, and overreacts at some minor things (eg, Firefox uses loopback networking for some self-tests - ZA says it's doing something evil (it isn't - no packets leave your computer)), and is a placebo for many other things.
And HijackThis is probably overkill for what seems like a very simple problem here: Norton AntiVirus Sucks. It is bloated, intrusive, expensive, slows your computer down, and downloads huge updates, and doesn't help much against viruses.

The solution to the problem is simple:
Firefox + Thunderbird (if needed) + Spybot (scan once / week or so at most) + AVGFree or Avast Free (one full system scan when first installed, after which the on-access scans will be plenty), and maybe a decent firewall or IDS - although with this set up, even the Windows XP firewall should be good enough. Oh, and something like Gaim would be ideal if you use any chat at all, but specifically MSN, AIM, and ICQ offiically clients are bad. MS Office and Windows Media player are also said to have some problems (other than macro viruses and DRM), but I've never seen any reliable data on it - get OpenOffice and VLC if you're worried.
After that it's mostly a matter of avoiding apps that install Bad Stuff with them - which is often just common sense.