I use NOD, but more as a matter of habit more than anything else. I have noticed that it does seem to have bloated over the years, so I tend to make sure the settings are on their lowest and make sure I use a mvps hosts file and just be aware of what I am doing.

After reading ths thread I am tempted to give Avira a try, but as I am pretty poor, is there any way of getting it to work, similar to nod321?

I have tried to get used to using a firewall (comodo primarily) but gave up with the endless interuptions and had so many exceptions it just seemed a waste of time. So now I just stick with the m$ one (which does seems little better now with win7, but im sure would be of no use to a determined bit of code).

B