I've had experience with many types of scanners.
For cheap and easy virus scanners. You can find a couple of sites on the web that will scan your computer "while you wait", so to speak.
The first thing one must have is a software firewall. No sense in putting on a virus scanner if you are going to leave your computer wide open to the internet.
Then virus scanners. Then your spyware scanners. Some or all you will have to turn off if you are a gamer, it will slow your machine.
I use " Avast! " for my virus scanner(free). AVG is a good and FREE as well. AVG is a small program so does not use lots of resources to run, probably better for older machines.
Spyware, the most popular are Search and Destroy, Ad-aware, and the new Windows one still in beta i believe, but I run it.
Here is url below for my favourite FREE utilities site. You will find all the ones I have meantioned. I will check back if anyone has questions on the programs. I 've tried many of them.
If anyone has questions on browsers, I have used FireFox and Mozilla for years and have seen most problems at least once. I keep Internet Explorer just for doing my windows updates..can't escape Microsoft completely! Once you've tried Firefox you'll wonder why you used Internet explorer for so long. Incidently, Firefox is available for Mac, OS X only.
If I could also mention, don't go crazy and download everything and install. Take it in steps if you are new to this, software can sometimes conflict with each other.
Uninstall all virus scanners before you install a new one.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best..._utilities.htm