I have been doing a reinstall of everything on my Dell Lattitude C640 now running updated XP Pro SP3. I decided to finally try Avast's free antivirus, after considerable years of experience with Avira Antivir, AVG, and some others. The claim of compact update files was especially appealing. So far the scans seem to be faster than what I am used to, as well.
In the past I have nearly always kept one or two antispyware/antimalware programs on my computer too, occasionally running scans to ferret out nasty critters and tracking cookies, etc., that my regular antivirus program wasn't preventing or finding. Usually these additional programs were Spybot Search & Destroy and Ad-Aware. In re-setting-up this computer I loaded the current versions of each of these, first Ad-Aware, then Spybot. But during its install Spybot said that Ad-Aware was going to conflict with it. And it might have done something to the Adaware installation, because it wouldn't even launch after that. Having not seen these sort so conflicts before, I uninstalled both programs, and started wondering whether I should now only have one antispyware program, BUT if so, what one? Maybe it should be a different one? Or maybe, with Avast, I won't need one.
So, I appeal to other users of the current Avast free antivirus: Do you also use a free antispyware program? If so, what do you think would be most effective and still not cause conflicts with other programs, including Avast's of course. If you think I don't need an antispyware program, too, perhaps you could explain how or how well Avast's free antivirus is handling those problems, too, better than antivirus programs used to do.
Thanks!