Can anyone advice which 'Anti- virus softwear' works best. I am confused with so many in t

Ok, if you are willing to pay, then Kaspersky is the best anti virus in the market. If you want something free I would recommend you choose one of these 3 products: Avast, Active Virus Shield and, and AntiVir. Do NOT get AVG!! So many people say that its so good and all that but, truth be told it is horrible. It has low detection rates (around 82%) and it can't remove alot of the viruses it does detect. Avast has about an 87% detection rate, and alot of shields. It comes with a webshield, a IM shield, a P2P shiled, a network shield, and a couple other ones. ActiveVirus Shield is powered by Kaspersky and has about a 99.6% detection rating, it updates up to 15 times a day. But it lacks some of the features that Kaspersky has. Last but not least is Anti Vir. It has about a 94% detection rating, and it is the lightest out of the 3, (meaning that it will slow down your computer the least.)

If you don't already have a firewall, other than Microsoft's, I would recommend getting Comodo Firewall Pro, it is easy to use, and its free.

If you don't have an anti spyware then you will need 2. 2 good ones are Spyware Doctor and Spysweeper, but they aren't free. Spyware Terminator, Ad Aware, and spybot are some good free ones. (if you are willing to pay for one, get a payed one and either Spybot, or Ad Aware, if you want to get it all for free then get Spyware terminator, and either Spybot or Ad Aware)

Also spyware blaster, trendprotect and Win Patrol are good, free tools to add to your defense. Spyware blaster prevents spyware from getting on your computer through active x controls. And Win Patrol, monitors your computer for changes made to your computer that are sometimes caused by spyware (such as a change to your homepage, or a new start up item) and it will allow you to either accept the change or deny it. TrendProtect, tells you which sites are safe and which aren't when you are in a safe site it will show a green check, if its a site that contains bad content or if its kind of safe it will show you a yellow !, if its not a safe site it will show a red X. It will also put a green check, Yellow !, or red X, next to each of your search results when you use a search engine.