Here's looking at you kid

George, hi

There are lots of computer experts on this 'ere forum, although occasionally they have been known not to agree with one another.

My contribution would be that although I do not know the answer to your specific question, when I installed SP2 on my computers, from the disc Microsoft sent me, it recommended that I check the machine for unwanted adware and similar by downloading something from Lavasoft. This is the relevant microsoft page with the appropriate link "Check your computer for unwanted software".

I have Norton antivirus and a firewall, but I followed this advice and the Lavasoft program found some "unwanted" (although not dangerous) software on my machine (a fair bit of it from Microsoft themselves!)

So you might like to try this too. Everything worked properly, as it continues to do, and it was a piece of cake to scan the machine and quarantine/delete the offending material.

All the best

Rod

Cheers Rod,

I forgot to mention however that my OS is a pile of shite named Windows ME. So would the same apply or would I need to look elsewhere?

Regards...George

Er, well. Now I might have to bow to someone else's superior knowledge
Although I really cannot see what possible harm installing the lavasoft thingummy could do, you could perhaps check their FAQs. It was certainly a very small download.

If this thread runs it will, most likely, be in about four reply's time that someone will tell you to get a mac.

George;

Ad-aware and Spybot can both be downloaded from their web-sites for free AFAIK.

When installed; live updates are available, as with 'Norton'.

John.

George,

Norton AV is obviously there to stop you getting infected with viruses.

The Firewall should stop more direct attacks (analogy: think of some scroat trying to break into your car & the firewall as a guard).

The two anti-spy apps John mentions will delete non-virus "malware" - stuff that throws adverts up on your PC, and keyloggers that try to record passwords (eg Internet Banking) as you type them.

Between them, they should keep your machine pretty tight. This assumes you do Norton updates at least once *EVERY* week, and run the spy apps pretty regularly.

cheers, Martin

E-mail:- MartinPayne (at) Dial.Pipex.com. Put "Naim" in the title.

Very helpful - thanks everyone.

Regards...George.