Another interesting tool is Sandboxie (http://www.sandboxie.com/). You could compare it to the tool DropMyRights, with the difference that DropMyRights will strip apps from certain rights and running apps with Sandboxie will deny malware the chance to see the real registry and file system.
For example, your run your web browser with Sandboxie. You download a virus, install it on your computer, the virus changes your registry, infect your system files. You close your web browser and you have a clean system. Why, because Sandboxie has done all these modifications to a fake registry and a fake file system. The fake registery and fake file system are removed after closing your web browser leaving you with a clean system.
Sandboxie doesn’t take too much memory (between 4 and 8 MB) and I have no slow down when surfing.
By default when you close the browser from Sandboxie you will also lose the browser cache, favourites, etc.
If you want to keep your favourites and/or browser cache then you have some possibilities :
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You can define in the Sandboxie options not delete the fake registry and fake file system when closing your browser. When you rerun your browser then the browser cache and your favourites will still be there in the fake registry and fake file system.
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You have an option in Sandboxie options to write the firefox profile settings (bookmarks, extensions) directly to the real file system, but when you do so you will give spyware the possibility to hijack your browser. A workarround could be to use Sandboxie together with a resident application (Avast??) that prevents browser hijacking.
You can use Sandboxie together with Avast. Sandboxie will protect you against new virusses that are not yet detectable by Avast.