Jeremy

I think your best bet would be to take a look at http://www.softpedia.com. You might find something...

Aside from sites like SoftPedia and FileHippo giving you the main key points about dozens of programs, I've yet to find a site where people take the severely time-consuming task of taking all known programs of a particular purpose and compare them almost down to the code itself ( ) with all pros and cons unbiased. I'm slowly doing this for Anti-Virus software and then moving onto System Clean-Up tools. With work, fiancee and gaming (pretty much all I do besides simply sitting on my a** doing nothing), I usually get rather bored of bouncing from program to program in VMware...

You didn't look hard enough.

If you're wondering about removing components from Windows, then you'd want to check out nLite.

This is only a ProActive test. The On-Demand test is what has the potential to really influence peoples' decisions and make them realize that freeware like AVG and payware like Symantec really do... well... suck.

Your opinion is not fact.

AV-Comparatives.Org - November 2006 - Retrospective/ProActive Test Is Out! PDF Report Teaser - AntiVir and NOD32 have the best scores. What a surprise, eh?

Then I would say you don't need a software firewall. I don't.

Well, you can download SP2 with any browser that has access to the Internet. Just Google "XP Service Pack 2" and the first link should take you to a download page. If IE isn't working for you, you likely have an infection for which you should use: Ad-Aware SE Spybot Kaspersky or NOD32 (anti-virus) HijackThis CWShredder Dial-A-Fix (re-registers the DLLs files to fix most common functionality in Windows)

How do you mean you "don't have" IE?

I'm pretty sure they are DLLs and EXE's in C:\WINDOWS\system32 that contain bitmaps (the images you see everywhere in Windows). XPero would be the expert on that since he makes the XPize tool to replace the half-decade old XP images with new ones.

You can download Service Pack 2 freely from Microsoft. If you don't have an XP CD, borrow a friend's legit copy and use your own CD-Key (if you have one) for that version of XP (Home, Pro), or whatever means you can. If you have your own CD-Key for Pro, I'm sure someone from MSFN, including myself, would be nice enough to lend you a hand in obtaining the files.

Try stopping the Automatic Updates Service and Cryptographic Services and deleting the contents of both the CatRoot and CatRoot2 folders and try again.

They do serve a purpose, that is to restore the Windows files to their previously non-updated versions. However, most people don't do that because you wouldn't want to undo a security fix for some sort of 0-day security flaw that "crap out there" is trying to exploit. Especially if you don't have any protection (firewall). No, Windows Updates verifies that info with the .CAT files located in: C:\WINDOWS\system32\CatRoot\{F750E6C3-38EE-11D1-85E5-00C04FC295EE} <(the numbers and letters may be different for you)

You can always use AutoPatcher.

Just leave it alone. It doesn't take up any resources by running and isn't very big anyway. And yes, you should have a firewall of some kind, but Windows Firewall is not good enough these days. it's targeted by much spyware and viruses. Go purchase a router. Then use computer sense. Then use Opera. Good to go.

As the program you're using is FileZilla and anything regarding its use and configuration is more than likely already available at the FileZilla Forums / Knowledgebase / FAQ, your choosing not to is your own loss and unwillingness to seek the answers to your questions.

Why don't you just leave the FileZilla Server set to automatic and started and forget about it? Worry free. You might try reading FileZilla's Documentation and the FileZilla Forums.

Getting Firefox or Opera isn't going to eliminate the need to update the OS with WUs. Also, if you're going to consider an alternative to Windows Updates, there's AutoPatcher and Windows Updates Downloader made by our own Jcarle.

What you should do is purchase a copy of Acronis True Image Home or Workstation to image the harddrive. it's an exact copy of the OS as it is when you image it. If you delete Windows files and registry to prevent it from booting, boot to the Rescue Media CD and restore the image, reboot, all better. 1. Open Acronis. 2. Select Backup. 3. Select All files and folders. 4. Select drive/partition. 5. Specify a different drive/partition, CD/DVD drive to save the image to. 6. After this is done, burn a copy of the Acronis Rescue Media to a CDR. I believe it's 25 MBs or so. There you go. Now if that OS downs psycho, just restore the image file and everything's all better.

Yes, they are the backups for uninstalling a hotfix, however, that is highly recommended against. It won't do any harm to your system by removing them. Check out my blog post about system maintenance here.

I'd recommend you try Dial-A-Fix to reinstall the Windows Updates components. Dial-A-Fix Homepage

To repair the operating system with the new motherboard, you should be able to do a typical repair install, which doesn't delete any files at all. As for getting data off the drive, you could put it in another PC as a slave drive and simply copy the files to the master drive or burn to CD/DVD.

K_O_, take a chill pill. No one is calling you a liar, try not to interpret things so harshly. It's not official from Microsoft and things can be and have been faked before.

I wouldn't suggest relying solely on an external harddrive for means of backup. Especially if you're trying to unsafely turn it on and off like you're intending to. There should be a "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in your system tray that will allow you to, obviously, safely turn it off. The next time you reboot your PC, it should appear again.