I have McAfee installed on two XP computers (seperate subscription and
email address for each) and am adding a Win2000Pro notebook to my home
network.  McAfee wants to charge me for a third package assigned with
a different, third, email address.  Is there good antivirus software
that can be purchased once for use on multiple computers, or is there
some other solution?  Second question:  What is the best/easiest way
to 'clean' a pc of all visited web sites, downloaded files, etc?  Is
deleting cookies and temps good enough?

Hi, 

AVG is a great anti-virus company. They have a free version of their
software, and the more feature rich version for a reasonable fee. I
used their free version for a year, and then switched to their fee
version. I found it much less resource intensive than Mcafee, and less
problematic when installing new programs or general operations.
http://www.grisoft.com/doc/HomeAndSoho/lng/us/tpl/tpl01

There is a multi-computer option on the page for that link. 

The free version can be found on this page. It updates itself daily
and runs in the back ground.
http://free.grisoft.com/

"Second question:  What is the best/easiest way
to 'clean' a pc of all visited web sites, downloaded files, etc?  Is
deleting cookies and temps good enough?"

Most of the time, yes. If you are worried about spyware and unwanted
installations then I would suggest looking into Microsoft's
Anti-spyware. I personally don't have great affection for Microsoft,
but the Anti-spyware they have been developing runs very well, and is
a great program/layer of protection while surfing the Internet.
Currently the anti-spyware from Microsoft is free.
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx

thanks, and happy holidays

webadept-ga

---

Request for Answer Clarification by bb88-ga on 17 Dec 2005 05:48 PST

I'll look into AVG, thanks.

Re second question:  "Most of the time, yes."  What are the exceptions
and are they of concern?
Regarding spyware, I use the free Adaware 6.0.  Do you think
Microsoft's free version is a better choice?

---

Clarification of Answer by webadept-ga on 18 Dec 2005 17:27 PST

Hi, 

Sorry .. didn't see this.. 

The "most of the time" was referring to spy-ware putting files in other areas. 

I used Adaware for a very long time, but switched over to the MS
product and have been happier for the switch. Adaware is a great bunch
of guys and really like what they do, but it wasn't cleaning out, or
blocking most of the nastier spy-ware programs. Being a Researcher,
I'm all over the web and some times run into some nasty places.

Try it out, if you don't like it, you can always switch back :-) 

webadept-ga

Good answer; short, direct to the question, just what I needed. 
Clarification  requested to further explain "most of the time..."

The best free Anti Virus software is available at www.free-av.com

You can also look into CLAM WIN, a very robust, open-source virus scanner.

You can find more information and downloads at: http://www.clamwin.net/