firewall. get one

[raverx3m]

i had been using a firewall with spybot and adaware for about 2 years now and no antivirus and got a virus twice.by my mistake
so about 2 days ago my firewall ate sh!t and i had to uninstall it but never installed it back and went surfin(dont ask where or why)

but from the time i got to a certain page about 10 seconds passed and i had 2 fully installed "antispyware" programs with about 50 more files randomly spread around my c drive
the spyware was "alpha(somethin)" program
and bunch of others
among that i had my task manager disabled by it and messed up my whole system in general.

so lesson learned for me and a note for everybody else to get some kind of protection.
it wouldnt affect dialup people as much as hi speed tho
but ..even if u not doin any suspicious stuff, get a frikkin firewall or use one that comes with windows xp

spybot is free by the way and theres alot of free firewalls and antiviruses online to choose from

 

[office politics]

you should setup and configure three functions to keep your microsoft machine secure.

firewall
automatic updates
antivirus

ps. this will not protect you against phishing attacks

 

[raverx3m]

antivirus autoprotect lags the pc worse than spyware

 

[Apokalipse]

Antivir Personal Edition is pretty light on resources.
also, you could try an alternate web browser. I use Firefox, a lot of people like Opera too.

 

[003]

I use the hardware firewall built into my router, I keep all software firewalls disabled. I use Nod32 antivirus, and firefox. I've never had a problem.

 

[figero]

I have found that the best Anti-Virus program is absolutely FREE!
Go to grisoft.com and download their free version os AVG. Make sure you enable "automatic updates". This one is so awesome that I have donated $20.00 to their cause.