Firewall: http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/
Firewalls are your first line of defense. They stop hackers getting in and virus sending your information out.
Comodo is considered by most IT experts to be a better choice than ZoneAlarm.
Although ultimately the best firewall is a hardware one (built into your modem) rather than software.
Has both automatic and manual update options.
This software should automatically start when your computer is switched on and be active all the time.
Anti-virus: http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html
Scans in real time so you don't have to run full scans every week. although you still can if you wish too.
This software updates automatically (once per day) so it always has the latest virus information to work with.
This software should automatically start when your computer is switched on and be active all the time.
Anti-Spyware: http://www.superantispyware.com/download.html and http://www.spybot.com/en/download/index.html
It's always advisable to use more than 1 spyware finder because they use different techniques to find the spyware, so using 2 or 3 gives you a wide scope of search.
Both these applications have both automatic and manual update options.
General cleanup Use http://www.ccleaner.com/ and http://www.wisecleaner.com/wisediskcleanerfree.htmlto remove unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space as well as cleaning up traces of your online activities to help protect your privacy.
For easy use I always advise people to make a folder on their desktop (or taskbar) called security or clean-up and put shortcuts (or icons) to all your virus scanners/cleaner software into that folder. This means you have everything in the one place and don't have to muck around trying to remember which programs to run etc.
Final word
Regardless of which software you choose to run, the most important thing to do is keep it up to date. Make sure it updates daily and have all the virus scanners protection modules (real time protection etc) switched on.
I'm already settled with the Avast Antivirus, the Comodo Firewall and a good anti-spy. Thank you for making this guide for us. I never took the time to thank you before. 
