Hi all, I had a friend to come by today and told me that his puter is acting weird, hanging up a lot, and shutting down. He said his wife and mother-in-law set it up and he has no idea what protections, if any, are on it. What would you guys recommend as far as any cleaners/av's/firewalls I could dl for him, burn, and take over to him that might help. And what are the best online test areas? This guy is on a slow dialup, so Im gonna try to dl the programs he needs. Thanks for your help.

Have him run both of these online virus scans:

http://housecall.antivirus.com/
http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan/

Then let us know if its working better and what the scans found.

You should download the following and then install them on his computer:

AdAware 6.0 (he will have to use the NET to obtain updates)
AVG free antivirus (updates from the web)

If he doesn't know what is on the computer, then you will probably have to show him how to use both of these. While on-line virus scans are all well and good, they have two disadvantages; first, for the dialup user, they consume a lot of time, and second, they will not prevent infections (resident AVs will do this) only find and remove them after they have done their damage.
Make sure all the latest MS critical updates are installed on his computer.
A firewall is also a good idea; but you will have to show him how to train it. Sygate Personal Firewall is a very good free application and seems pretty stable.

From what your friend indicates, he either has some spyware or malware on a computer used by the family. Or, he needs to do some routine maintenance, like running scandisk and then defragging.

Regards,
John

Also, while you are downloading the programs mentioned above, you might wish to grab the latest versions of other security-related programs as well, such as Spybot Search & Destroy, SpywareBlaster, SpywareGuard, ZoneAlarm, et cetera, for installation after this particular machine has been dealt with.

Thanks everyone. I dl'd the latest Spybot S & D, Ad-aware, AVG, ZoneAlarm, and Spywareblaster. When I got there I found he was hooking up with AOL, and using all of their recommended tools. It took me almost 4 hours to get his puter cleaned, up and running. AVG found and cleaned 12 viruses. S & D found and then corrected 212 (red) problems. Before we started, according to ShieldsUP he had 3 ports stealthed, most ports closed, but 5 were wide open. I installed ZoneAlarm, and he is now completely stealthed. Before I left, we dl'd Dustbuster and got rid of some junk. Needless to say, when I left, he was truly amazed as to how well his puter actually ran. He and his wife both agreed that it was a LOT faster. Thanks again guys. I think my next help for him will be to tell him to register on this forum and keep his mess together Markil

If you want to decrease the probability of your having to do this all over again, try steering your friend away from AOL. They charge far too much for their service, and I've had to clear too many AOL-related problems on others' computers.