I use XP Sp2 occasionally on my dual-boot system with Ubuntu Jaunty(9.04).

I've grown tired of a bogged down system and running a google's worth of programs to try and protect my system from attacks.

I have been using McAfee since it is free for Comcast subscribers. It is running
MBackMonitor
mcagent
mcmscsvc
McNASvc
McProxy
Mcshield
mcsysmon
mcuimgr
Total: ~80MB of memory at the moment.

I don't believe this is necessary to protect my PC. I also use SpywareBlaster, AdAware, and Spybot. It seems to be a lot of trouble to protect my PC since McAfee wants to control everything and doesn't let Adaware or Spybot really do their jobs properly. McAfee will also take forever to run 8 to 10 hours in some cases for a virus scan.

I use Firefox most often for browsing and have NoScript and WOT installed. I also control my cookies pretty well and block a lot of third-party cookies when I visit sites. I approve the cookies and javascript sites before they are allowed on my system. This is a tedious task I know but for me it's worth it especially when the popups don't happen very often after initially setting it up with a few sites. I do use Chrome occasionally for browsing also and use IE only when required by certain sites.


My question for the experts here is what software should I have installed and running in order to protect my system. What would be your recommendations?