TSGL: Do i have Virus Protection

[Don Penlington]

Steve wrote:
>My computer woke up with the XP Security Center alerts turned off:>>


I have mine permanently off anyway.  All it does it alert you when your a-v 
needs updating etc, more nuisance than it's worth, except perhaps for 
beginners. It has no effect on whether those programs are actually running.

Be aware, though, that disabling Security Centre without your knowledge 
COULD be the sign that you have admitted a piece of malware.  Do a full 
scan, and don't rely on just one anti-malware for that. You only need one 
active, but you should keep 3 or more for occasional scanning.

Your system looks fine and reasonably protected, though I'm not sure how 
much anti-spyware protection you have with Nortons.

  For antivirus, I'd suggest AVG or Avast. Why pay when there are equally 
effective free programs around?

BUT do you realise that the XP firewall is one-way only. It won't stop any 
trojans phoning out your sensitive information. And it won't stop ALL 
trojans getting in---no single system is perfect or ever likely to be.

A proper firewall should be 2-way. I suggest you get at least ZA free 
firewall. I use the pro version which includes anti-spyware as my primary 
defence and quite like it, though it's a little overly-reactive at times. 
Still, at least that way, you know it's working.  The free version, which 
is firewall only, is fine.

And I also recommend the free version of Winpatrol. It has a lot of useful 
features the other protection software doesn't have, and seems to live 
happily in its active mode with ZA (but probably not with Nortons, which 
seems from all accounts rather incompatible with just about everything 
else). Winpatrol advises you whenever any alteration is being made to 
certain vital parts of the registry, such as File Associations, startups, 
and the like.
In other words, it protects you against anything sneaky going on that you 
might not otherwise know about.

Don Penlington


 From the Beach at Surfers Paradise in sunny Queensland.
Computer tutorials, local scenery,  and other things at my website:
http://users.tpg.com.au/deepend/index1.html