Jeremy

I recommend Sygate Personal Firewall Pro. Been using it for quite some time now and I love it, especially the DLL Authentication. Although, it can get a bit annoying when launching games sometimes, due to the online multiplayer, you have to minimize the game once it's loaded to accept new changes Sygate sees. Also, I love the "Block all traffic when Service is not started".

More disadvantages than advantages. Just use nLite on XP Pro SP2 and RyanVM Pack and XPize, hardware firewall, small software firewall to notify of outgoing, use Opera or Firefox, use small freeware alternatives to the huge commercial programs, don't have loads in Start-Up, disable Services... enjoy.

Start > Run > services.msc Windows Audio Service Started and Automatic?

XP Pro SP2 nLited

I use what I need for my purposes. If it isn't needed, bye bye. Simple as that. And I don't like unneeded Services. I don't like unneeded DLLs, or EXE's. They waste harddrive space. That is why I am thankful and grateful for each new release of nLite.

It's good to have a software firewall even with a router because if anything you purposely open or download in e-mail or on p2p happens to contain any malicious file that plans to call home, the firewall will notify you. If you have 10 MBs of RAM to spare, use Sygate Personal Firewall. It is awesome.

Sure, just go to My Computer > hardware > Device Manager > right click on the Device Driver, properties, Driver Details. View the list of files that make up the driver, search them and copy each file to a folder and zip it. Now you have a backup of the driver. Uninstall the software then simply direct Windows hardware wizard to the folder containing the unzipped files. Or use a program called Double Driver.

Remote Desktop, built into Windows. Smoother than any VNC client. UltraVNC crashes if any lag is present.

Just because it's newer doesn't mean it's better. In the case of ZIP and RAR, sure. But, Microsoft Cabinets compress better than 7zip. 7zip is newer than .cab...

Where is vcBlackBox?? Lol, probably overwhelmed at the bloat in Nero 7. I'm using v6.6.0.16.

I used vcBlackBox's NCab program to remove stuff from Nero and recompress the installer with 7zip ultra compression. Silent, too. All I have is what's needed for burning. v6.6.0.16

Nice going, Dig. Yeah, that's the 2nd main reason I don't use MSN. First is all the GUI-bloat. Use Trillian. Supports many protocols including MSN, but without the crap. Cheers. By the way, common sense should indicate to you, when some glitch/error/lockup happens on one programs and gradually starts happening to everything else over time that a virus has been busy infecting your EXEs and DLLs. Also, don't use Norton. It sucks. My future relative-in-laws had Norton on their PC with the auto-update, auto-scan, real-time monitoring, etc... I uninstalled that, installed Kaspersky... long and behold 330 viruses!? Where was Norton during the computer's time of need? Obviously wallowing in a puddle of its own garbage code. Kaspersky may not be the fastest scanner, but it sure does it's job bloody well.

I'm taking a 1 year computer hardware and software course, ending up with A+ Certification. Of course there will be people who find ways to pass certification by memorizing everything but don't understand a bloody thing. I do both. So don't argue with me. lmao. Anything Zxian says you might as well take to heart. He's always right. You should see him rant to me when he finds someone doing something they think is good for their system when it's not. He goes apes***. lmao

Moving your swap file to a seperate partition does not give you any performance gain. if you had not done this in the first place, you wouldn't be dealing with a low disk space warning.

Wicket, uh? I didn't attack anyone. I guess I have to play the newest games with the latest technology to see ghosting. Maybe it's just my monitor. I'd like a new one, but don't need one. I don't want your cookie and I am chilled, lol. Anyway, good luck to my buddy there on picking out his monitor.

Weeeeeee!!!

Andromeda, you're freakin' insane. Why don't you just switch to watercooling? I have an Antec midtower with a 350W Smart Power PSU, P4 3.0 GHz Prescott with stock heatsink and AS5 thermal paste, 1 GB DDR PC3200 RAM, an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro with a VGA Silencer attached with stock thermal paste. I have an Antec 120mm ultra silent fan on the back. I can put my ear right up to it and barely hear it. However, the 80mm Panaflo fan on the front is noisy. It was like that to begin with. But NINE fans man, I think you're overdoing it. That is... I can't even describe in words how nuts that sounds. Post some pictures so I can s*** myself, lol.

omfg, I can't believe how picky people are over 8ms response times. I have a 2 year old Dell 17" LCD and I don't notice any "ghosting". Maybe I get so into the game I don't notice it? Am I supposed to glare as hard as I can and move my mouse back and forth repeatedly for 3 minutes straight? How do I see the ghosting? I mean, really, when you see the lower numbers here and higher numbers there in the "What's new with this new advanced technology" I guess you get a little picky. But in a real world scenario, what's the BIG difference? Or maybe I'm just used to my monitor? But yeah, if I were to go with a new LCD, it would be the Hyundai ImageQuest simply because it's the only one on the site I shop at that has 16.7 million colors instead of 16.2. Wait, am I being picky?

Yeah, I love the DLL Authentication in Sygate as well.

Niiice..

Yes, Audacity is nice. Cool Edit Pro (which someone told me was bought out and put into Adobe Audition, dunno if that's true or not) is somewhat better in terms of easier-to-remember hotkeys, but is not free of course. Use Audacity.

Why don't you just use seperate programs for the audio? BeSweet can do practically anything with audio conversion in terms of intermediate/professional video editing. I extract audio as WAV and transcode it to AC3, takes very short amount of time. Keep in mind, I haven't done video editing in almsot a year, but if I got back into it (or at least had the FireWire port on my camcorder fixed/replaced) I'd still use the same method. It was efficient and worked like a charm. I remember every oine of my 10 steps to DV2DVD conversion. Screw the All-In-One programs, I want a great job done, not a half crap job.

I think you're just used to it.

Try using FinalData. it has worked when others have failed.

Those are nice digital lips, lol. I agree with suryad. CCleaner has a Cookies section in it to keep certain cookies. That would be easier to do than to install a larger program, unless you want additional spyware removal capabilities. Ah... must... not ramble about security. Different topic.