BleepingComputer.com: How to Prevent Rogue Anti-Virus/Spyware Programs???

While running vista I had my pc taken over by a couple rogue anti-virus programs...so i finally made the jump to windows 7 and had been clean for a good 3 months. However yesterday i got hit with "anti-spyware soft." I cleaned it up today but I'm wondering whats the best way to prevent my pc from being hit with these rogue programs... I keep auto-update on, Adobe Reader & Java are both up-to-date (i think they seem to exploit Adobe somehow to infect pc's), I use AVG's free version & just added MalwareBytes too

In short, I was wondering if un-installing Internet Explorer would help since once the programs do find a way in they use IE to connect to the internet...

Any suggestions??????????? Thanks in advance.

There's an add on for firefox 'Noscript' which can stop drive-by downloads, click jackings etc
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722/

There's Host file protection, blocks access to dodgy sites
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

And also Web of trust, which gives an indication about the quality of the site you're about to visit
http://www.mywot.com/


You say you have AVG anti virus, but do you have a firewall?

Please read How Malware Spreads - How did I get infected which explains the most common ways malware is contracted and spread.