Thought I'd introduce two little apps for those interested:

1) A-Squared Free

-Free to use antivirus/antispyware/antitrojan etc etc scanner. No resident scanner available in this free version, but otherwise quite a nice, complete product. A simple product, which allows you to update, scan, quarantine and whitelist items. Advance users might not like the lack of customization that can be found in more elaborate products, but this seems to work quite well from the user reviews I've read.

I can't speak for detection rates as I'm new to it myself, and haven't had a virus problem with it.

Official website: http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/free/
Also available at www.download.com

2) Hijack Free

-Official description: Freeware! HiJackFree helps advanced users to detect and remove Malware manually. With HiJackFree you can manage all active processes, services, drivers, autoruns, open ports, hosts file entries and many more. For your full control over your system.

Both these software interfaces remind me of AVG Antispyware Free, when AVG (still called Grisoft back then) bought out Ewido Antispyware, but before integrating the antispyware function into their other AV/firewall products.

Anybody using AVG Antispyware Free back then would remember how much it sucked when it was no longer supported. AVG Free incorporated the Antispyware function, but left out all the other tidbits like process/ports/service/startup monitoring.

Well all that is back in Hijack Free, available here:
http://www.hijackfree.com/en/

Nice software for those who digg all those free security apps.

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On a slightly nastier note, anybody here using Avast Home/XP SP2 32bit?

Mine can't seem to scan past the C:/ drive, always stopping somewhere before it gets to my other hard disks. I've used chkdsk /r to check for bad sectors that might be stumping it up, as well as corrupt files etc, but nothing seems to fix it.

It only happens when using the Thorough and Standard scanning profiles. QuickScan, Right-click scan as well as boot-time scan are fine. Reinstalling does not fix the problem.