Windows 7 - Best Free Security Setup?

Heya there (: Of course, paying for your security is generally the best choice, but...

As a scanner, you can use TrenMicro's HouseCall

For further protection, you can use both Superantispyware and Spybot

For more high-profile malware, you can use HitmanPro. There's a free trial offered, and it will continue to remove cookies even after the trial expires. For malware, you have to buy the full version after the trial expires.

As for firewall, I agree with everyone else. Windows firewall is one of your only ways. Just do scans *very* frequently. If you know how to use Linux or BSD, you can set up free firewalls in a virtual machine.

To prevent infections, I recommend you use Sandboxie. You can find a great tutorial here.

And always generally just be safe.

I had avast and I switched to panda cloud free version, avast let a few rogue av's though and it caused me alot of problems. When people bring me pc's to fix I usually find avast or mse on them and they didn't catch the rogue and as a result the system was highly infected.

No av is perfect regardless both are still good products.