BleepingComputer.com: Old Dell laptop needs AV/FW

If you cannot find cheap memory and a hard drive, call around to local "used computer" places.

As for the OS. There were versions of ZoneAlarm that worked with 98 and NT. Look around their web site see if they still offer them.

One poroblem is you want to patch it as much as possible, but !@#$ doesn't have the patches available on their website anymore.

One thing you might want to check out is a light Linux distro. Xubuntu comes to mind as the most likely one to work.

The current versions of ZoneAlarm, the 8.0 family, will not work ME as the require atleast XP but the 7.0 family might. The versions below 7.0 will not work anymore with anything. However, I think ZoneAlarm might require more ram.

Older versions of ZoneAlarm can be downloaded from this link....

http://download.zonealarm.com/bin/free/inf...aseHistory.html

zone alarm doesn't work. Ill just use ClamWin as the on access scanner since the computer RARELY uses the internet. It is, like was said by someone earlier - a photo album and word processor.

ChrisMN, on Oct 8 2009, 05:16 PM, said:

You may have mis spoke here, but just to be clear, Clam Win is an On Demand scanner only, not On Access. For those that don't know the difference, an On Demand scanner doesn't run until you tell it to--you demand that it examine all files on your system and associated settings that could be dangerous.

An On Access scanner--also known as real-time, Guard, shield and a host of other names--is a file filter that runs in the background so that it can protect the system from getting infected in the first place. It will only examine a file when you try to open it, and will block access to the execution of the file unless you tell it to allow it. That is the main protection mechanism of an antivirus and is much more effective than many people realize. Still, it isn't perfect, but in my opinion other types of shields that may come with an antivirus or other security scanners, such as registry monitors and intrusion prevention systems, can often be more trouble than they are worth, depending on how risky your computer use behavior is and how much you know about computers and security.

ChrisMN,
I've been thinking about your predicament with this old, small computer.
Suppose you forget all that AV thing (but keep Kerio) on the laptop.
But instead of connecting directly (or through a router) to the internet, you connect through another, bigger computer that runs a solid, modern, updated, AV. Then you could skip the defunct ClamWin and just not worry about any of it. Google out ICS - internet connection sharing - through another computer. You'd need to allow the other computer to be the gateway, again, google it out how to do it. There may be some security issues for the gateway computer, unfortunatly, having never used this sort of setup, I can't add more here.

I see you will go for more memory. Good thing. BUT, ME is still not supported by all AV applications, hence my post, as a possible, meager solution more memory or not.

Papakid, on Oct 7 2009, 12:16 PM, said:

My feeling precisely.
But I think ChrisMN wanted it for wife to use surfing. Likely impractical really.

Papkid, good point, and a refresher, how the FAT32 system is different. Thank you!

avast antivirus and malwarebytes antimalware

Avast! is a very good, free, AV product, and YES, apparently will behave on ME
http://www.avast.com/eng/system-requirements-avast-home.html
Support ends at the end of 2009.

This post has been edited by tos226: 10 October 2009 - 01:02 PM

tman 1, on Oct 10 2009, 09:15 AM, said:

Tos226 and Tman1 -

Malwayrebytes clearly states on its site that IT DOES NOT WORK WITH WINDOWS ME.

According to the FIRST thread in this topic I tried Avast! and it DID NOT WORK.

THANK YOU

Well, some people just want to post some kind of help and aren't real careful how they do that. It's really too bad that MBAM isn't compatible with ME.

The fact still remains that Avast is the only freeware Antivirus that is still compatible with ME and other operating systems that predate the NTSF file system. The reason it doesn't work on your system is because it isn't compatible with your system specs. It requires 32 MB of RAM, which is all you have, or had originally, which means that you had enough to run Avast but not Windows or anything else. I think tos226 may have been anticipating that you have installed the RAM upgrade and so might be able to run Avast. But we also never heard back from you on how much free space you have on the hard drive, which is just as, if not more, important as amount of RAM. In any event, if you are resigned to keeping the laptop off the internet, that is fine.

I also find it significant that Avast will no longer support pre-NTSF operating systems at the end of this year. Thanks for that information. I just glanced at some commercial antivirus vendors (Norton and Trend Micro) and they don't support anything earlier than XP, so it could be that finding any AV for those OS's are going to be hard, if not phased out altogether. Evidently, the technology needed to find and remove rootkits, which is the big thing in the malware world right now, won't run on those older OS's.

I guess it just goes to show what those of us still running XP have to look forward to. It won't be too many more years that we will be in the same boat. And a little later anyone running any 32 bit system--apparently rootkits won't run on any 64 bit system.