total newb in need of help

hi there,i was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on how to make my pc more secure while online.

i'm running win xp home edition,web browsing with mozilla firefox. microsoft antispyware,zonealarm and AVG antivirus free edition.

i have windows firewall disabled with zonealarm as my only firewall.

all updates are installed for my programs but i'm a little worried because i'm completely unaware of how to go about securing my system properly as i have no REAL knowledge of computer security.

if anyone could clue me in i would be most gratefull,i don't like the idea that because of my own lack of knowledge,people could be stealing account passwords and all sorts from right under my nose.

anyways hope to hear from you all soon

I'm about to go to bed but maybe a couple of things you didn't mention but may have in place.
Do you have a password set for your admin account and is it a strong password maybe using numbers and letters.
Do you have the other user accounts set to limited and the guest account turned off.
You can change all of this on the admin account. Go to start>control panel>user accounts.

Pooh Sun TZu wrote these guides. Maybe they will help.

http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=255353
http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=255443

And pooh was the man:(

get blacklight by fsecure http://www.f-secure.com/blacklight/

and also check the downloads at www.sysinternals.com

there are several good security programs there...

...sounds like you're in pretty good shape. As muert0 suggests, check your administrator password. By default, there is no admin password in XP and a good tech can get into a machine by simply booting into Safe Mode and logging in as Administrator. You might also use the classic logon prompt which can be set in "User Accounts" in the "Control Panel" (see 'change the way users logon"). HTH.

p.s. -- oh yeah, use a strong password.

OK,

I see that you are using FireFox. Get the plug-ins that block adverts (Adblock) and scripts (noscript)

They are here: https://addons.mozilla.org/

Also, go here: http://www.diamondcs.com.au/index.php?page=products and help yourself to the freeware tools. I particularly recommend RegistryProt ;)

Then go here: http://www.everestlabs.com/ and get SpyDefense................set it to run real time protection.

Get Spybot Search & Destroy (find a site that works for you) and update it and use the "immunise" option (set it to start in "advanced" mode)

Now go to http://www.emsisoft/en/software/free/ and get A-Squared, it is a specialist dialler and trojan scanner.

Get into the habit of updating your anti-malware scanners, booting into SAFE MODE and running them regularly. I would say once a week.

I see that you have AVG, please be aware that it cannot delete stuff in archived files. DiamondCS (link above) have a little tool that lets you delete on start up.

Finally (for the moment :D ) go to http://www.winpatrol.com worth it just for the cookie manager ;)

Good Luck

wow thanx guys,that's a lot to go on.everyone here seems real helpfull,i'm glad i signed up :)

i'll be sure to visit often whenever i need more info.

thanx again :)