And yes I do mean cleanliness....as a few of you will be extremely surprised at the amount of spyware, viruses, trojans, and general other crap on your PC

To start get yourself a free program called Ad-Aware 6.0 and make sure you update it frequently...this prog gets rid of most of your spyware found in downloaded programs from major businesses to progs you got off kazaa....yes you need it

Next to back up this program we have a prog called Spy Sweeper which removes more of those nasty files/cookies etc....You can use one or the other but unless you get a full version of spy sweeper then it will become out of date....nevertheless I run both at least twice a week to clean my system of the crap normal surfing leaves on your PC

The most important one an Anti Virus Program which you can update weekly...I recomend for non XP Pro users AVG Anti Virus which is free....I say non xp users because after you initially load XP Pro AVG will slow down your accessing your progs for about a minute as it loads it self? Other free anti virus progs include Antivir Guard...WHICH is crap! My PC just got majorly infected because Anti Vir didnt stop the viruses from entering my system....Im now trialling NOD32 and Kasperksy Anti Virus systems....unfortunately AVG wasnt much better but at least it did detect them unlike anti vir...

Next is a firewall...free is almost as good as some of the top of the line bought ones and should do you wonders for your PC safety from hacking etc. Some I have used include Sygate Personal Firewall and Zone Alarm Pro (the latter I had huge problems with so Id personally never download it again)....

If you need to hide your surfing habits from employers/your missus/the police then Evidence eliminator is a Cookie cleaner/PC security Program/Anti Police tracking program which is pretty awesome and can save you some serious embarassment if ever your pc gets confiscted and checked by the police.....the only shortfall I have found is that it hasnt deleted my surfing history .....but Im sure this is just something I have no checked off in the options tab...as there are about 50 things it can do to your pc...and all are good...EE has an upgrade feature on it which will detect whether you are using a pirated version...it threatens to dob you into the FBI....so dont update it...make sure your firewall doesnt allow it to access the internet...simple as that...

If you cant afford em then check out your fav program to trial the ones that arent free as the last prog is 150$ american I think...ie kazaa lite

Good advice there FOL. A Firewall and Antivirus software are a prerequisite for safe surfing.

Here are my tips for getting rid of cookies, images and junk like that from the Internet that get stored on your hard disk.

If you have advanced computer skills and enough RAM to spare (256MB or more) then I would recommend installing a Ram Disk and store all your temporary internet files in it; cookies, images, everything like that. That way every time you reboot your computer, the Ram Disk is destroyed along with all cookies and images and junk like that.

You can get a free Ram Disk driver for Windows XP from the micro$oft website and there are a few freeware versions out there too.

To get rid of all previous websites, FTP servers, and places like that that you have visited is far more difficult. This information is stored in many different places in the Windows registry; by many different programs. I don't think there is any single program available that can delete every bit of information about every single place you have visited while online. You could always do this manually by deleting every key you find in the windows registry that stores info like this, but that would be very time consuming, and could stuff your computer.

If anyone would like to know how to setup up a Ram Disk to store all their temporary internet files then I can post a How-To here. A lot of damage can be done if an inexperienced user attempts to edit the registry like this and I would only recommend people with a intermediate to advanced knowledge of the windows registry try this. If your up to the challenge then this is a sure-fire way to get rid of internet files automatically; every time you reboot your windows computer.

yes all great advice havent tried it but ive heard NOD32 is pretty good pretty much finds everything
i also putAd-Aware 6.0 on my little bros computer and well he doesnt get on it much and hes only had it for 2 months and well Ad-Aware found 943 spyware things on it now thats alot for such a short time on line
theres also think its trend micros house calls or something for a free online antivirus good for lazy/cheap people
heres a link only prob is it only scans when you go to the web site and if you dont have adsl/cable could take about 20 min or so thats not including fullscan of puter ive used this and its better then nortOn because it picked up things my norton didnt even my fake viruses i have.Some trojans are good if you are the one wanting to use them lol just kidding
makes you wonder why and how so much info is being sent back to the mother ship and everyone is guilty even this site Web sites logs your identity, family members or coworkers that use your computer can see what sites you've been visiting, companies are stealing your personal information and using it to create a profile of you, and hackers can watch everything that leaves your computer. Your every move online is being tracked.
another good one is ghost surf GhostSurf is designed to protect your personal information from ISPs, websites, other users of your computer, and malicious "spyware" software; in general, GhostSurf addresses each potential source of online privacy abuse. By routing your information through anonymous hubs around the world, GhostSurf makes it impossible for websites to see who you are or from where you come. GhostSurf blocks personal information from being sent by your browser, and lets you see everything that is sent--in real time.

Sorry tart, no scripts. could upset the locals.
DONT FREAK OUT THIS IS A SIGGIE SCRIPT ONLY YOU CAN SEE THIS INFORMATION

Some good tips there tartass. One thing i would like to say is you claim this website logs your identity. Not true. Knowing the IP number of a user does not mean Planetskunk or anybody else knows your identity. Your identity is your name and address etc. An IP number is only the identify of the computer used at the time you visited the site. It doesn't identify you personally.

We also use cookies on this website as well, and there purpose is only to keep track of what's in your shopping cart. When you log into the forums you get another cookie and that one is used to keep track of logged in members so they don't have to type in a user/pass every time they want to make a post. If we did not use cookies (2 of them) then Planetskunk would not be possible.

If you want to delete the forum cookie then look for a cookie on your hard disk called Sir Skunk A Lot. That's our cookie. I purposely gave our cookie that name so a user could easily find it if they wanted to. We have no spyware or adware cookies on this website and never will.

I'm not saying tartass is impling that Planetskunk wants to know a visitor's identity, i'm just clearing up some misconceptions about IP numbers and cookies and how this website uses them. Planetskunk doesn't want to know who you are.

Hi Guys,

I am a professional Tech Support (computer Geek), all the advise given is good and generally pretty acurate. I would suggest using the best antivirus program (regardless of whether it slows your machine down or not) and that is Norton's A/V but you must manually update the virus lists and not rely on auto updating (not for any brand of A/V). I would also suggest manually downloading the viruse reapir tools (just in case). As for spyware detectors I actually use several all at the same time (TSR'd) they are; PestPatrol Pro, Spybot, Adaware Pro and are couple of other standby's - as with any scanning programm it to must be updated very often and actually run a full system scan at least once a week.
As for firewalls there are several good ones but i use Zonealarm Pro with many customised settings in place. Finally i use a brilliant cleanup tool, WindowWasher - this cleans & scrubs (takes quite a while for government type whipes) all traces of when, where & what you have been doing on your system and the WEB !
Use the tools wisely and you will never again have any problems associated with virus's, worms, back door access programs etc.
Lastly but not least - backup - backup - backup - backup - backup - backup - backup - backup - backup - backup & keep the copies safe and secure 1 copy at home and another offsite (somewhere else safe).

High Steve, about time you posted (should have known it would be about computers ), welcome to the site. I also have a hardware firewall built into my router that passes Norton's firewall test, don't know how SP2 is going to react to it though as it's firewall can't be deactivated and does not work well with other firewalls, don't we just love Bill Gates.

u can disable the firewall in SP2, it was the first thing i did hehe as for A/V there are far better ones out there than norton imho. f-prot is one altho it may not be around any more, been several years since i used an A/V program. not using IE as your browser can protect you against a helluva lot of viruses, spyware and adware that use IE exploits to gain access to your machine.

-j

A few years ago I wouldn't have touched Nortons anti-virus with a barge pole, then they bought out a couple of other A/V companies, combined them together and shot to top spot.

i had norton installed on a pc at work the other day and for the life of me i couldnt get a modem to install properly. i was getting blue screens and page faults and was worried id have to reinstall windows. gave norton the boot and the modem installed fine. to each their own, but i personally would never ever install norton by free choice. altho i do keep a copy of the latest version around as its amazing the number of ppl who want it.

-j

the newest version of norton AV has heaps of probs running SP2. I had it on my windows box and I could no longer run scandisk anymore, kept spiting out a errormess everytime I booted. I went to the m$ update site to get a patch and they said there was no cure for the problem as yet.. So I reinstall the 2003 verion of norton and that fixed the promlem. I don't really have a need to use m$ windows these days but I do boot it up almost everyday...not sure why, doesn't even have a decent webserver.