hmmm in car mac anyone?

Oh, OK, I didn't think there could be two people sharing the same name with the same incorrect opinion.

Well, a lot of people don't like Macs, and a lot of people are called Dan, so i'm guessing we're not the only ones. To be fair, i freely admit this is because i am not willing to give them a fair chance, although i do admit they're better for some stuff, my mates at uni that do media educated me in how much better macs were for video and stuff, i'm just far too stuck in my ways to change now :)

Not just video and stuff, Macs are real, grown up Unix under the GUI. And so far they don't get viruses.

Talking of viruses, I'm running Windows 98, with a 300k broadband connection (ntl) routed via a fairly newly installed Belkin wireless router. I'm told this is overally a very s**te combination as far as security's concerned. This could have something to do with the fact that now and again my PC just shuts down of its own accord. Could anyone suggest a half decent freeware virus package that will just detect any viruses I've got, or even one that's specific to whatever it sounds like I might have?

Almost irrelevant though, as soon I'll be doing a full reinstall, and putting something like ZoneAlarm on there (yes, I'm a fool for not already having it, but I've had rather more pressing issues on my mind of late), so hopefully I should avoid future shitehappenings.

You're better off with AVG or Symantec Corporate though.

Hmm, I've got 98se on this machine and otherwise the same NTL broadband, I thought 98 just didn't work in NTL world these days. A mate was trying to make it work and when we tested his box on my cablemodem it wasn't happy there either, although an install of win98se worked fine (and was fairly painless.)

For AV protection I just use Agent rather than Outlook - I don't think anything can get in without help in that case. Also, I run ZAP and a NATS router which would make things even more secure was it not for the fact that ZAP never seems to find any viruses anyway. Used to have PestPatrol too, but that only ever found dodgy cookies and fought with ZAP so I stopped loading it.

I wouldn't bother, just fdisk the system away in total and reinstall - sorts a number of problems.

ZAP comes with anti-virus, and I think you can do a 30 day try out.

OTOH if the system is infected, you won't be able to install and run it. If you need stuff that's on the disk, you would probably install a new OS on a new HDD and scan the old disk from there, before moving stuff onto the new disk.

Eeek! You really need to get something between you and the nertnet.

I thought I told you to do this in the past? Are you guilty of the ultimate crime of Not Listening To Steve?

Anyway, get the following:

AVG anti-virus Zone Alarm Ad-aware

And run them all regularly. From your description (the shutdown) you could well have some nasty adware or malware. That's the usual symptom because the gits that install malware usually put code in that shuts down your PC when (a particular region of) memory is accessed by scanning or just becuase the OS wants to use it.

Quite possibly. Computer security's taken a bit of a back seat with the events of my life of late.

Noted - cheers Steve. I think I'll do a clean reinstall of Windows 98 (s**te though it is, heh) - I can't really be arsed to upgrade to XP on my machine as it'll really want more RAM to do it justice, and if I'm spending money on XP and RAM, I'd want to buy a flat screen as well, and by then I'd have been better off buying a new machine. And knowing me I'll probably decide to buy a new PC about a week or three later. Anyway, the main thing I'd be worried about is anyone getting my online banking details, and smile is a pretty damn secure site, so I don't think I've got any worries there (the little money I do have still seems to be there!).

Are they free by the way - the 3 programs you mention above (I think ZA is - what about the others?).

Coming soon - I'll be asking questions about auto-sheet-feeding scanners, and how to set up a little system to scan in several sheets, OCR them and manipulate the data thereon.

Yes all free, and with regular free updates as well. I used Ad-aware on a PC that had been run like yours, it detected hundreds (yes hundreds) of applications that shouldn't be there. Once the owner had accidentally downloaded a trojan, the trojan then got busy downlaoding all the other stuff as fast as it could.

All this sounds extremely possible, given how much like a sack o' s**te my PC's running like at the moment. Think it's clean reinstall time.

Oh and a seperate keyboard, oh and an external DVD for dash mounting. Oh bugger, so why did I spend extra on a laptop then ;)