This is a short and sweet guide to pretty much making your PC invulnerable to 99% of bad internet mojo. It will stop pop-ups, stop viruses, and stop hackers. If you have a high-speed connection you can install and configure all this in under 20 minutes. Dial-up will take longer to download all the files you need, but you are also less vulnerable to some attacks. (Dial-up is not worth it IMO, its way tooo slooowww) ABest of all - all this software is FREE! :D So lets get started.

Step 1)

First lets see how vulnerable you are to hackers: Go to Shields Up and click the Proceed button - click the silver "all ports" button and let the test run - you want all green and blue squares - if you get red you have open ports and need to turn on a firewall. WindowsXP SP2 has one integrated or you can install ZoneAlarm - you may want to check the messenger one too - but im going to show you how to kill those pop-ups anyhow.

Note - if you are using a home internet router - for a cable modem or DSL - either wireless or wired routers have a built in firewall - these are far superior to the software firewalls. Check your router documentation - but all the popular models like Linksys, Dlink, and Belkin come with active firewalls - they should allow you to pass the sheilds up test with no problem.

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