Thank you in advance for any response to this.
The question I have is the avast info says that it has anti-rootkit and spyware
protection, but I still see folks in the threads running rootkit revealers and separate
anti-spyware scanners. Why would you need these extra programs running if Avast
has them built in? Might running the other programs cause conflicts or false positives?
Just curious, I am trying to streamline my set-up, and have chosen to uninstall the others
in favor of Avast. Should I keep my other spyware program?
Not a program is perfect, neither avast of course.
The second or third opinion (scanning and cleaning) won’t harm.
People used to recommend other freeware tools.
False positives could occur too. David will suggest to disable the antivirus while running other scanning (off line from Internet). Which other spyware programs do you use?a
Most of the other anti-rootkit scanners are on-demand and as such don’t pose an additional load on resources and like Tech said one may not detect what another does detect. One of the biggest issues with anti-rootkit tools like rootkit revealer is they aren’t for the average punter as it just gives a list of data and you have to analyse that, dangerous.
The same is true of anti-spyware applications like SAS as it too is on-demand in the free version.
I have been using spybot but I have recently discovered that the immunization of programs like spybot can create havoc among virus software as it can create allot of false positives. I have found that I now prefer to stick with one program with all around protection, like avast, but that is also not a system cow…(Norton comes to mind)…as I had both the big ones and both ending up crashing my system. I was using AVG, and even tried the new AVG8 version, but unfortunately they have not masted the “system cow” problem. Avast seems to have had much more time to streamline its’ program, and so far, after putting it thru its’ paces, I have not had any resource trouble what so ever. I like that 
Hmmm… maybe bad antivirus made bad (false) detection… It shouldn’t occur this way…
I think this is an AVG related problem.
PapaSmurf,
You can use SpybotSD with Avast! without any incompatibility problems. I have 2 XP-Home PC’s, one SP2, one SP3, and an XP-Pro SP3, all running Avast! and all running Spybot 1.5.2.20 with IE browser helper and Teatimer active.
The problem you refer to in your post was with one specific AV, and was not due to “false positives” as such. The immunisation entries incorrectly handled by that particular AV were immunisation entries in the ActiveX ‘Kill Bits’ portion of the registry. Microsoft has clearly described how these type of entries are to be made, and most good quality AV software has no problem with them. The particular AV in question probably didn’t bother to check properly. Microsoft use this type of entry themselves in some of their own security updates. You can read more about this type of entry in Microsoft article KB240797