Blocking Unwanted Parasites with a Hosts File. You can use a HOSTS file to block ads, banners, 3rd party Cookies, 3rd party page counters, web bugs, and even most hijackers. This is accomplished by blocking the Server that supplies these little gems. http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

IE-SPYAD adds a long list of sites and domains associated with known advertisers, marketers, and crapware pushers to the Restricted sites zone of Internet Explorer. Once you merge this list of sites and domains into the Registry, the web sites for these companies will not be able to use cookies, ActiveX controls, Java applets, or scripting to compromise your privacy or your PC while you surf the Net. Nor will they be able to use your browser to push unwanted pop-ups, cookies, or auto-installing programs on your PC. Just set the restricted sites security to disable everything. http://www.spywarewarrior.com/uiuc/resource.htm

Spybot Search and Destroy http://www.safer-networking.org/index.php?page=download Spyware scanner

AdAware http://www.lavasoft.de/software/adaware/ Adware scanner

Foxit PDF Reader http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php Why use Adobe's bloated reader when you can use a stand alone, leaner, cleaner reader with more features

Magical Glass http://freestone-group.com/ Screen magnifier

IrfanView http://www.irfanview.com/ Picture/image/audio viewer

Pure Text http://www.stevemiller.net/ Text format stripper

Diskeeper Lite http://www.boostware.com/hardware/harddisk/diskeeper_lite.html A faster, better disc defragmenter than Microsoft's

Desktop Calendar http://www.desktopcalendar.tk/ Calendar

WordWeb http://wordweb.info/WW3 Spell checker, dictionary, synomyms theasurus

NetMeter http://readerror.gmxhome.de/ Download upload online meter

TitleBarClock http://www.wfcravener.com/TBC.html Time and free ram in every title bar

Tclock Light http://homepage1.nifty.com/kazubon/ What Microsoft's tray clock should do

Karen's tools http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ Many different useful programs. I use "Once A Day" everyday

StripMail http://www.dsoft.com.tr/stripmail/ Strips > from forwarded emails

Agent Ransack http://www.agentransack.com Free program to search within any type or amount of files for keywords

Cookie Wall http://www.analogx.com/ Prevent unwanted cookies and only accept the ones you want





Simply click on the little Snippy icon in the systray and mark out the region of the screen that you want to copy, and that's it, you're done. If you do this on a webpage it will automatically include the URL as it did above. A great little tool that doesn't need to be installed and it's free. With this tool I think I can get rid of the other screen capture tools I use. The second picture is a snip of a snip to show the URL will be above the snip. http://www.bhelpuri.net/Snippy/default.htm


The Best Not Free Antivirus Program

Consumer Reports September 2007 issue has picked Trend's PC-cillin Internet Security 2007 Suite as the best not free protection. Across the board their suite was picked as the best antivirus, antispam and antispyware program. It costs $49.95. Of course it won't work with Windows 98/ME.

They also recommended to use Avast 4.7 Home Edition if you want a free antivirus and it will work with Windows 98/ME.

After downloading, installing, updating and testing Avast it found all of my testing virus and trojan simulators and did not produce any false positives. It also doesn't slow down my system like AntVir did. I will use Avast and uninstall AntiVir and Bitdefender 8. I will leave Avast's active shields enabled and will no longer be "running with scissors".

Trend Micro PC-cillin Internet Security 2007 Suite. Rated best by Consumer Reports. $49.95: http://shop.trendmicro.com/

Free antivirus - avast! 4 Home Edition Download: http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html 15.5 meg

AV-Comparatives. On this site you will find independent comparatives of Anti-Virus software: http://www.av-comparatives.org/

If you need to check your email security go to http://www.gfi.com/emailsecuritytest and have them send you their tests.


I had BitDefender 8 installed as a scanner to backup and compare the results of any test for viruses and trojans. When I went to use it it reminded my that it's one year registration was about to expire. So I went to their website and found out that Bitdefender is offering it's version 10 scanner for free. When I downloaded and installed it it said it would expire the same day as BitDefender 8. I contacted BitDefender and they told me to use their uninstall tool to remove BitDefender 8 first. Apparently BD 8 puts a secret registration key in the registry that has to be removed before installing BD 10. Download and use their uninstall tool and then get BD 10 which doesn't have any active protection but can be used as a manual scanner. You must be online when you install BD 10 if you never had BD 8 so you can create an account. If you do have a BitDefender account just click "skip this step".

Please follow the next steps in order to be able to use BitDefender 10 Free Edition:

1. Uninstall BitDefender 8 from your computer using our uninstall tool: http://www.bitdefender.com/uninstall

Access the link and when the window with the BitDefender file appears, please choose the "Save to disk" option. Download the tool, run it, restart the computer.

2. Download the BitDefender 10 Free Edition kit from our website: http://download.bitdefender.com/windows/free/winfree/en/bitdefender_free_v10.exe 21 meg with a 10 meg update.

When I did this it still didn't work. I tried to do it every way I could think of but it still wouldn't work. It so munged my system that I when I decided I had had enough and tried to uninstall BD 10 it wouldn't. So I uninstalled manually and rolled back my system with scanreg restore.

Because of this I am no longer recommending BitDefender. Try it at your own risk.


I installed A-Squared Free http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/free/ (16.6 meg), updated (11.2 meg) as a backup scanner and used it to scan my system. It detected my test virus and trojan but also detected one false positive.

What I like about A-Squared is that it doesn't put or leave any running processes on my system when I use it. I will use it as a backup scanner.


EICAR - Anti-Virus test file: http://www.eicar.org/anti_virus_test_file.htm


Trojan Simulator 1.0 - Free Trojan tester by Mischel Internet Security Ltd http://www.misec.net/trojansimulator/

Remember the Heroes of Flight 93
To all of those who are fighting for or have fought for freedom you have my undying respect and thanks

Updated 9-29-7