Laptop and AV software

[Lil O'lady]

My Dell laptop has is about 4-5 years old, XP OS. Until recently it had an old version of Sophos and Spybot, and ran OK. However in the last few weeks it ran increasingly slowly and I suspected a virus. On scanning, it appeared that there was something that Spybot could not get rid of.
I have uninstalled the Sophos (which was doing nothing) and Spybot, and have since then tried the free downloads of AVG and now Microsoft LiveOnce (or whatever it's called). Both of these seem to make the laptop grind to a halt.
Can anyone suggest a suitable combination of protection - I don't mind buying a product but only if I can try before I buy.

[cancross]

I would uninstall the new products for now, go to http://www.malwarebytes.org/ and dowload and run the free anti-malware tool.

I would then re-download Spybot and run that as well. Ensure you are updating these producs regularly - and you should be connected to the Net when you first run these products so that they can update themselves.

They are good at identifying and removing viruses, trojans etc...

The other thing to try is in your system tools. You could try a system restore where you take the PC back to an earlier date - say a month or two ago - when you know it was working well.

So Start menu, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Restore.

Once things look good again - do reinstall protection. AVG is good, it's probably just your other problems that are getting in the way.

[Lil O'lady]

Thanks - seems to have done the job nicely