To answer your last question,

I haven’t tried all AV systems but,…

  • NOD32 is pretty OK, fast scanner and effective (we use this at our server)
  • Panda: is used at work by my bosses and they have no complaints,…for myself at work I use Norton AV for MacOS X ,… but the fact that MacOS X is immune for all virusses your get in emails,…makes it kinda useless,…
  • AVG is another free AV,…but I read somewhere they will stop the free version,…
  • Bitdefender,…has free version too,…but NO background scanning,…

I suggest you do some “review” googling :slight_smile: and then make up your mind about it,…cause like it has been said in many threads before,…an AV is aways under development,…things are NEVER perfect,… :wink:

Installing SP2 is a good thing,…however I heard rumours that some software does not work that properly afterwards,… ::slight_smile: The best thing to do is installing WinXP compeletely fresh and then install SP2,…unless you have an official CD of winxp with sp2 included (like me)

with Avast you will be pretty safe,…if I was lieing to you,…I wouldn’t be writing this post ;D

good luck, and let us know,… :wink: