can anyone help me out ive tried a few but keep getting compatibility errors

You are asking for opinions. While I am not a huge fan of Norton products I do find that Norton AV 2002 works very well in XP. It is my AV of choice for this platform.

Good freeware that I've used with XP includes
http://www.free-av.com/
http://www.grisoft.com/html/us_downl.html

I agree with Harry, Nortons for me.

Ditto, not a big fan of Norton either but it seems fine (apart from the usual slowing down of the system) in XP.

Tried McAfee with the so called XP patch but no good, compatability errors etc etc

You might want to try PC-cillin 2000 by Trend Micro. It's simple to use, VERY effective, and works great with XP.

My choice is AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition for home use. I've been using it for a year or so with ME, 2000 and XP and it's rock solid on all three platforms. Best of all it's FREE with free updates. Avoid McAfee like the plague - it's crap, buggy and bloatware. Here's the link for AVG :

www.grisoft.com

Check it out, I'm using it on XP right now, have been for months.
Hope this helps,
G

I wanted to save this, just in case someone needed some options. :)

Norton 2002 has worked great for me so far.

I usually install PC Cillin 2002 or F-Secure V5.40 on XP built systems. Both run perfectly on Win XP. PC Cillin prolly uses a few less resources than F-Secure if that is an issue for you though. ;)

I installed F-Secure. When I was on Mirc (It was my first time :) ) I saw someone say that there was a program that could let you mess with the irc system. I curiously downloaded it (Not intending to do any harm: HONEST!!!). It turned out to be a virus, I'm not sure if it was a virus, probably a worm (is that the same as a virus??). Anyway F-Secure said it can't repair/delete/solve the bloody problem because the dam file kept renaming it self.

The virus didn't do anything virus like so I don't know what it was complaing about. In the end I deleted the whole mirc folder where the virus was located.

Know I'm wondering what Norton AntiVirus/AVG/McAffe/PC Cillin would have done. The main reason for installing F-secure was that it supposedly had 3 engines that could detect any virus and remove them - "Just like that".

I've now restored a ghost image and and not using any programs that access the net (except for Internet Explorer ofcourse). Not sure what to do as I i can pickup a virus with in 10 minutes of using MIRC using latest pc security softwares what hope do others without anti virus have??

northon 2002 is very good