Too many AV's and Spyware Programs

I have the following programs running, do I need all of them?

Zone Alarm Security Suite v6.5.737.00
AVG v7.5.432 (free version)
Windows defender
Spyware Doctor v3.5.1.498
Ad-Aware SE Personal v1.06r1
Spybot - Search & Destroy v1.4

 

You could dump defender...and the only ones you really need running is your firewall and AVG, unless spyware doctor has a real time shield....not familiar with it. If you're running the tea timer in Spybot, it's not that good (Spybot is for scanning and immunization)

 

If ZA is being updated regulary I would keep that. If not, get the free ZA firewall and keep AVG. You need an antivirus that is being updated. It seems to me that Spyware Doctor is a full-time protection program. If so, let it run and keep the others as scanners only. (Recent information seems to indicate that Defender really only works for Vista and has very limited effectiveness in XP. I have uninstalled it.) Running two antivirus applications concurrently is actually less effective than one-go figure. More than one real-time antispyware program may conflict, but often is OK-it depends on the exact combination and I don't know that there is anywhere to look for that information. As long as they don't scan at the same time, you can have as many spyware scanners as you like, and scan with them all. I scan with 4 different apps each week. No one program has ever been shown to find/remove everything. Yet. We can always hope... For even more protection, get thee behind a router.

 

What the other guys said, plus you need an anti-virus program. Read this thread, it describes what combination of programs you should use.
How to protect yourself from malware