First of all really sounds to me like your monitor is probably on it's last legs...considering it's age and the fact that you can somewhat refresh by turning it off and letting it rest. Doubt that it is virus related, honestly don't know that I have heard of a virus which affects the monitor.
As for safety set ups the ones given here by PhilliePhan are what we all recommend and pretty much follow.
To save resources I would go with obviously a virus program...AVG works well for me and others I have worked with but any of the three he notes are good.
Anti-spy programs...Spybot is #1, Window Defender is good too. A real MUST is SpywareBlaster...AND it DOES NOT run in the background so there is NO resource usage.


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