[ale] preventing trojans/bots

[Jim Popovitch]

I spent some time today with some family members who's home PC was
having "issues".  I suspected the usual pop-up, "search" tools, etc.,
but soon found that I was dealing with a trojan'ed box.  It's a
WinXP-Home (sp1) PC that was purchased 2 years ago and last received
Norton Virus updates over a year ago when the initial subscription ran
out.  I took some time to educate the very (non-concerned) novices on
what was happening.  I even showed them all the _outbound_ spam emails
that Norton was blocking (but I doubt it was blocking them all).  These
folks are very nice people, but completely removed from internet
security concerns.   I've disabled their PC for now, and I am heading
back to their home next weekend to re-install XP.

In the meantime I would like to get some input on something:  Is there a
solid AV tool for XP that doesn't require any user interaction, provides
a firm "locked down" environment, can automatically update signatures,
as well as periodic filesystem scanning?  For this PC I'm favoring
complete automatic action over any user prompting.

Any help is appreciated, thanks,

-Jim P.