Whats the deal here with cleaning your computer?

I just moved, my laptop now is getting crazy pop-ups, to the point where i cant get on the web, My girls laptop has AOL on it, which she loves, i'm neither here nor there with it, but I put some anti-spyware and spy bot on her laptop and now I'm getting pop-ups on hers. IS AOL SECURITY MEASURES ANY GOOD? What is the best way to protect your laptop from everything?

Whats the deal here with cleaning your computer?malware

You've gotten some goo advice in bits and pieces.

So...don't rely on AOL--and you may need to uninstall that protection (at least firewall and anti-virus) before you install alternatives.

Download and install a firewall. Ditto, one antivirus. Ditto some spyware protection. (Make yoiur choices from among the optiosn suggested. You can research them at download.com, and read CNet editors' reviews as well as some users' reviews.)

Make sure all are updated.

Here's my addition to this advice: use Firefox (it is free) or, if you just cannot break the Internet Explorer habit, use IE7. Both have popup blockers, which you should turn on. They won't block many of the spyware popups, though. You need to update your spyware protection and run scans fairly frequently.

Whats the deal here with cleaning your computer?norton 360