Does anyone know of any software that will do this?

[Timmeh]

I am absolutely sick to the back teeth of stupid little programs installing themselves on my pc and changing all kinds of settings, especially in IE. Does anyone know of any software I can install which will not let any software like this (Gator, shopping companion, to name just 2) install? Is there anyway I can kind of lock my PC so no software can be installed unless I say so?

If anyone knows of anything I would be so grateful

 

[TheLogLady]

My first suggestion would be to get rid of IE. It allows way too many active-x auto-installers to put gator, etc on your machine. When I used to use IE exclusively, I would get gator or some such at least once a week. After switching to phoenix (a mozilla-based browser) I have been spyware free.

Ad-aware Plus I believe offers real-time protection from spyware.