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[Will]

My parents computer has become so utterly infested with spyware/virii/other nasty shit that, rather than argue for hours and hours trying to clean it, i am just going to back up their important files and reformat everything. Since they have dial-up at home, I am going to download all the installs for the programs they should have on their computer at my place and burn then to a disc...so my question is, what all should I make sure I have?

I'm definately going with Spybot S&D and Ad-Aware, any other suggestions?

[McTaggart]

AVG Free

I'm kinda stuck for a free software firewall though, any ideas?

[J_Saunders]

I love Security Task Manager. It has let me track down so many viruses that anti-virus programs have missed.

http://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/

[Spike]

Comodo firewall is free, I'm not sure how good it is.  You have to register with them but it doesn't cost you anything.

[Scytale]

If you want to be uber geeky run Windows from inside a virtual machine on Linux, I'm assuming you're parents aren't going to be playing 3d games or anything that needs awesome (Non emulated) hardware. Just create a virtual image of the OS in it's pristine (spyware free state), then create a script to load the image everytime the computer boots.

I've done it with qemu a few times in the past, relatively trouble free and performance is pretty good for doing stuff like running office, i.e, outlook etc, just makes sure you install the accelerated kernel module (which is now GPL'd!) .

If you can't be bothered doing that a good start would be to download and install firefox for them, less vulnerable to exploits then i.e

[tacroy]

This may not be something you can control directly, but if you want to ensure the long-term survival of their machine, make sure they don't use AOL (the real one that you download as a program and pay for monthly).  It never fails to slow down even the most impressive machines.  I mention this because you said they use dialup and for a long time, AOL was my mother's dialup internet provider.  She has DSL now, but I still can't wean her off AOL.

[Will]

I'm definately getting Firefox for them. They've never used AOL, which is a very good thing. Scytale, your idea sounds like a lot of fun to play with, but I don't know enough about computers to do it, and don't really feel like learning.

The big problem is that they are easily suckered by flashy things; game downloads (my mom was OBSESSED with Mah Jong for a while) and screensavers and the like. When I was living with them, I had it set up so that their user accounts didn't have administrator rights, and they had to ask me to download stuff for them. Once I moved out, they whined around and made me set them up as admins, so now they can download anything.

I'm going to lobotomize their hard drive, and use the destructive-recovery option to return it back to normal. That should keep it clean for a while.

[tacroy]

The big problem is that they are easily suckered by flashy things

I remember a few years back I used to use a program called "AdGrabber" (or something to that effect) that would not allow banner adds to load on websites, so instead of a flashing red and blue bar with a message, it was just a white box.  If this program is still around and functional, it might help you somewhat.

[ackblom12]

Comodo firewall is free, I'm not sure how good it is.  You have to register with them but it doesn't cost you anything.

I love the crap out of Comodo myself, so I'd highly recommend it. Of course if they just like to click things it may not do much good.