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3d flower box is one of the screensavers that comes with windows. chances are that that's not the actual problem - something else is stealing all your computer's horsepower, and that's making the screensaver so slow to exit that you see that little program in the taskbar. could be spyware or a virus.



highly recommend microsoft's anti-spyware -

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en



and grisoft's AVG antivirus -

http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1



both are free.

Arnold,

I suggest and use this all the tyme # 1 Spyware tool:o ...........Free too



http://www.lavasoftusa.com/



A few reviews & tips:

http://www.download.com/3000-2144-10045910.html



http://www.firewallguide.com/spyware.htm



http://windows.about.com/cs/productrevi ... daware.htm

Gosh Paul good advise, however the one and only time I loaded AVG my system totally crashed and could not get passed the sign in stage, still have not got my computer back from the tech shop dudes I would have liked to have given AVG a chance but now am leary.

Arnie, I have run msn messenger for a coons age it seems to be one of the least invasive messenger programs out there. I bet it merely served as a gateway for something that was lying in hiding.

I also run Ad-Aware. It seems good as well for a coons age I have had trouble with yahoo messenger being awkward so perhaps each computer is different and whatever we have loaded in what ever combination can be a lethal computer cocktail so some and not so to others. Funny stuff this modern technology.

minks wrote: I also run Ad-Aware. It seems good as well for a coons age I have had trouble with yahoo messenger being awkward so perhaps each computer is different and whatever we have loaded in what ever combination can be a lethal computer cocktail so some and not so to others. Funny stuff this modern technology.


U crack me up..........:wah:

it's very, very important to bear in mind that there are two, very very different 'messengers' on an windows box.



windows messenger is an 'instant messenger' application, for chatting in realtime with others.



windows messenger service is a background system function, which was designed to allow system administrators to send alerts to user's desktops easily - and which can be abused just as easily by the ne'er-do-wells out there.



and just to add further to the confusion, both windows messenger, and windows messenger service, have or have had security exploits published, which means that they can be used to do bad things to your computer. the messenger service is the most prone to it, and for most people, there's no reason to even have it running. 'expert' that i am, i disable the service within the system administrative tools, which is not for the faint of heart. i don't recall what programs out there can take care of turning it off more easily.



windows messenger, the IM/chat software, has also had exploits, wherein carefully crafted messages could open a door into your system through which an assortment of narsty stuff can waltz. however if you keep your windows software up to date, you should be reasonably safe from that.



oh, regarding firefox - don't be lulled into a false sense of security. firefox exploits in 2005 outnumbered those found in IE. it is not a panacea. use dedicated antivirus software. i still stand by AVG even with minks's caution - more often than not, when an antivirus program causes a machine to go poof - it means the machine was already infected with a 'smart' virus that saw that you were installing something to get rid of it, and so went into slash-and-burn mode. i've been using AVG for a couple of years now, and haven't had a lick of trouble.



my favorite freeware firewall - sygate - sadly was bought by symantec/ norton not long ago, and just recently they pulled the plug on it, the rat-bastards. but really, a hardware firewall is generally preferable. you can get them very very inexpensively these days. even some motherboards have the firewall hardware built into the LAN adapter controller (most nvidia Nforce boards).



oof. way past my bedtime (2:25am).....

Paul that one post just gave me more information, in layman's terms, no less, than I ever hoped to learn about firewalls, etc....thanks for that!

along with the big brain, i also have big hands, a big nose, and big feet. you know what that means, wink wink.....









....it means i wear clown shoes!!

:yh_clown