What the Heck? Computer Survival Time?

A good example of this would be to put W2k on the internet even with SP4 Or the eartlier pre sp2 windows xp with firewall off by default I would shorten the infection time to as little as 5 minutes tho All this is alleviated by applying downloaded sp's and rollups before connecting to the internet Or using a good hardware NAT firewall in a router till you can get to windows update Or by installing a good software firewall

Thanks dachew for your opinion . I was planning to have ZoneAlarm Free 7 ready on a flashdrive before connected to the Internet with my DSL modem. Even a T1 connection cannot patch and download that fast. It's just tedious… to look for each update and download it. What are your opinions about ZoneAlarm Free? Even thought it hasn't been updated in a while -.-?

I went for over a year with xp sp2, no updates, no AV, no layered protection and only windows firewall behind a cheap nat router without a hint of malware a maliscous web page in a drive by infection just about wiped me out I see a lot of people running AV and software 2 way firewalls that get terminally infected from operator errors. I am simply stating facts, no opinions are involved the best updates are those slipstreamed into the install cd, this going to microsoft for countless(93plus) patches is for the birds with sp2 An OS shouldn't be a patch work quilt

Why no layered protection? Was Microsoft Updates just too much work for you? Or was this a test machine? Operator errors? Can you explain? Formatting should be another year or so for me. Yea, I agree. Even the best protection with lots of money won't protect you. No AV or browser is invincible. I see a lot of people paying so much for memory hogging Internet Security software. It's just up to user decision. And it's up to user decision whether what goes into the PC.

I had just gone thru a period of using norton's, spybot's teatimer and windows updates(some wmi? one) and crashed several
computers where I had to uninstall reinstall several apps or even reload windows fresh

Malware wasn't as bad back then, maliscous web pages a lot lamer

I tried running naked since I thought safe hex would protect me, if I had known about firefox with noscript I could have made it 2 1/2 yrs that way

I prefer a computer that's fast and efficient

Avira and winpatrol would be my choice today for layered protection, I could reload a computer every 3 months for the time saved with
a bloated down secure machine

Not all people have that luxury

Operator errors? Can you explain?

Having teatimer resident and answering a request wrong, going to warez pages with IE or FF, loading the wrong codec for some porn,
using P2P to obtain programs, loading too many conflicting security programs, the list is endless, 60+ running processes

I had no trouble with Microsoft Updates. Just that I found Norton a bloatload and was tedious to "tame". It takes around like 7 start-up entries and around 5 processes once the PC boots up. And the Internet Security are just to expensive. And it rips people off. Just's gonna make people more paranoid. I'm not the type of person to load my Firefox with colorful themes and add-ons. I'm just simple. I limit it to a SiteAdvisor, AdBlock, plus a theme. I also limit my start-up entries to 5. I don't even bother knowing why users visit crack sites and warez. They're just purposely risking the computer. After finding that it doesn't work, pop-ups happening, and then they start grieving and getting upset. Nervous, frustration and all that.

I do a lot of multitasking with an old OC'd amd64 single core and only 512 megs of very fast ram

I might be doing a video conversion in low priority mode, burn a dvd and surf a few forums at the same time

My normal online mode

Running processes:
C:\WINDOWS\System32\smss.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\winlogon.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\services.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\lsass.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe
C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.EXE
C:\WINDOWS\system32\spoolsv.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe
C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.6.0_06\bin\jusched.exe
C:\Program Files\internet explorer\iexplore.exe

Firefox with noscript for any questionable web site

NAT firewall and windows firewall

Spybot immunize

Frequent scans with SAS and MBAM

Windows fully updated, java, flash etc

Safe hex and vigilance are worth more than all the other safeguards combined

I did trip onto a bad banner ad on a usually well behaved web site last week and had 18 IE popups in a few seconds, I shut down quickly and ran updated scans, came up squeaky clean but raised hell with the web site

You might wanna add Adblock+ and Flashblock. No more pesky banner's/ad's/auto-starting flash's etc etc (and of course still use noscript.)

You might wanna add Adblock+ and Flashblock. No more pesky banner's/ad's/auto-starting flash's etc etc (and of course still use noscript.)

you read my mind, thanks

Hey Eric Well, for me its a small price to pay. In return I am being able to decide which and what script should be run in my browser. With Noscript, you would never by mistake be able to click banner's with exe. codes, weird AD's with redirects etc. etc. "Funny" Java-scripts are also blocked. From a security point of view, this is very effective. It took me awhile to get used to, now I don't even think about it. If I want to inspect or search a site further, I only need to enable temporarily permission from noscript for the main-site. Mostly thats the only one you need to enable. Of course, if a site links to a embedded video, say YouTube, you need to activate that also, if you want to see the video that is Sites you visit often, and deems safe (Never can be to sure tho), just enable "allow" instead of "temporarily allow". Noscript will remember this setting, so you don't have to define permissions from time to time. In the options section, you further have the option to define trusted sites which should always be allowed to run scripts, just like the trusted zone in IE. Here it just called "whitelist". Theres a lot more to Noscript that meets the eye. Try browse around in options, so you get a feeling of what it does, and what it can do to meet your needs. Abydos

What are your opinions for a good AV and firewall?

AV

Freeware:
Avast
AVG
Avira Anti-Vir

Non-Freeware
Kaspersky
(Nod32 as outsider)

Firewall

Freeware:

Comodo Firewall Pro.3.0
Keiro Firewall from Sunbelt
Online Armor

Non-Freeware
None (Comodo and Online Armor would still be first choice)

Those are just my picks. I'm sure a lot of people will agree and disagree