XP Home query

  • Thread starter Thread starter Netty
  • Start date Start date
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Netty

Hi

My mother-in-law is running XP home edition. Everytime she starts up her PC
or restarts it, XP tells her that her firewall and antivirus is not on and
protecting her and she has to wait anywhere upto 10 minutes before she can
do anything else on the system. It's as if the system freezes. She then goes
in to turn her XP firewall and antivirus on after this time to find it has
already turned itself on. When I checked with her what antivirus and
firewall she was using (to see if she had any conflicting programs) that's
when she told me she was only using the XP firewall and the one that was
built-in to her wireless broadband modem. I have been under the impression
from what I have read in the past that these sorts of firewalls cannot be
relied upon by themselves and that they can be easily hacked. So with this
in mind, I've advised MIL to install something like ZoneAlarm asap. I've
also advised her to look into getting the SP2 for XP downloaded and
installed too as this wasn't done by the chap that built her system a while
ago.

Question is, is it a flaw in XP that's causing the 'freezes' as described
above? I'm also presuming she is not protected whilst this is happening.

Any thoughts?

TIA
Netty
 
Netty wrote:
> Hi
>
> My mother-in-law is running XP home edition. Everytime she starts up her
> PC or restarts it, XP tells her that her firewall and antivirus is not
> on and protecting her and she has to wait anywhere upto 10 minutes
> before she can do anything else on the system. It's as if the system
> freezes. She then goes in to turn her XP firewall and antivirus on after
> this time to find it has already turned itself on. When I checked with
> her what antivirus and firewall she was using (to see if she had any
> conflicting programs) that's when she told me she was only using the XP
> firewall and the one that was built-in to her wireless broadband modem.
> I have been under the impression from what I have read in the past that
> these sorts of firewalls cannot be relied upon by themselves and that
> they can be easily hacked. So with this in mind, I've advised MIL to
> install something like ZoneAlarm asap. I've also advised her to look
> into getting the SP2 for XP downloaded and installed too as this wasn't
> done by the chap that built her system a while ago.
>
> Question is, is it a flaw in XP that's causing the 'freezes' as
> described above? I'm also presuming she is not protected whilst this is
> happening.

Answer: No, it is not a flaw in XP that is causing the freeze. It is a
flaw in the user who is running completely unprotected and whose
computer is probably severely infected with malware. The worst thing she
could do is install ZoneAlarm and SP2 at this point.

Your mother-in-law should take the machine to a professional computer
repair shop (not a BigComputerStore/GeekSquad type of place) and have
them clean it up or back up her data and clean-install Windows.



Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
 
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