I havent used any form of AV in over 7 years now, and I never have had a virus, I just practice smart surfing techniques and have 3 bogus email accounts to sign up for things (except for TPU of course!) .
All my family has AV and they are asking me to fix their stuff all the time.
That is just the difference between a computer user and a power user. Your family doesn't have a clue what they are really doing. I doubt it is even virus and malware breaking stuff. More likely to be the 12 search bars they installed to play their Bejeweled and Zuma overloading their PC with ads.
You really should get some AV. Lets just say not all viruses are out to break your system. That is a myth.
I'm with you on that TheLaughingMan. I haven't had an AV installed on my rig since, well, a long time lol and like araditus I am also proficient in safe surfing and having about 12 different e-mail accounts
I only installed avast last month because the wife's rig is down and she needs to go on shopping sites for christmas presents.
Since installing avast I've been getting pop-ups every hour or so notifying me of blocked
exploits and stuff. A scan hasn't shown anything infected, so it could be someone attempting to attack me; who really knows?!
araditus; I'm starting to believe all the people that told me I was stupid for never having AV. Don't wait to get infected before you cover yourself. I once did a google video search for something dirty (NSFW), and I got a blatant infection attempt (antivirus 2009 lol). Not saying you'd search for something dirty, but it's an example, I didn't even leave google's video search page and I got an infection attempt. Banner ads, videos, anything flash, etc. can all be "made" to infect you.