Ellie if you only have anti virus you are at risk. I would suggest you get Malwarebytes and SUPERantispyware, both of which are free. These require you to manually update and run scans but they only need doing every one to 3 weeks depending on how conscientious/nervous you are. I never leave my external hard drive connected to the computer. This is both for safety and economy. Connected it is open to attack and also runs all the time. If you have a factory built computer your power supply might be taxed to a degree unless your external drive is self powered. Most today are not self powered I believe. You wrote: If I can't bring my computer up ( that is called a crash or a blue screen) I install my recovery discs first. The CD drive works even if the computer has crashed. There is no real answer to this untill the catastrophic event occurs. You might get clues for days before the event to warn you. There would also be valuable clues in the event of a blue screen of death from the error message displayed. (BSOD) I assume you mean Best Buy replaced a defective hard drive with a new one? What was written on the labels of the disks from BB? That would be a clue as to what they are for. As I noted before recovery disks allow you to take your computer back to the new state it was in when purchased, a backup created on your external drive will return the computer to the state at the time of that backup. Any work saved in between would be lost. You can store your data on the computer itself and back it up to the external drive for protection. Always a good plan to have data you do not wish to lose saved in 2 locations Outlook is generally a part of Microsoft Office although I understand it can be bought as a stand alone program - quite expensive too. One would presume Cobian Backup came with your Go_Flex drive. It is good that you ask these questions but be sure to allow yourself to enjoy the benefit these things can bring you. A computer is only as good as the person sat in front of the keyboard. Urlee and Cat_ky I have no issues with anyone owning more than one computer, I have 6 and all working yet I live alone. But to purchase another computer "just in case" seems rather more than odd to me and a complete waste of money for an item that keeps becoming out of date with alarming regularity. Don expressed it very wisely I think.

Give me your old computer, or give it to someone you trust , i wouldnt risk giving a hard drive to the trash without a hammer. I have been using Avast on Vista laptop here as it seems to be the most popular right now... but that could change fast with a new version. Unless you live in a multifamily building its seriously doubtful anyone will want to steal your wifi connection and the connections with your bank and such will be highly encrypted,, no one will be cracking into that quickly in the short amount of time you're going to be using it. Follow proper security recomendations and you'll be fine. New solo browser window for your banking or other secure financials... highly recommended if you have wifi or cable network of any kind ;) And close it and clear cache when youre done,,, unless youre positive all youre sharing is blocked. Public hotspots ,,, Vista has a special public place security feature you can use... great for single stand alone non networked computers in the home too. Wifi is cool and 'nearly' totally secure - it would be unusual for someone to gain access to yours unless you have a crook for a neighbor or a stupid kid. ,, im fixing to unsecure mine now for a few days... if I see someone using it ,, I'll block them if its not one of my freindly neighbors accidentally connected. Not a big deal to me if I know the user. But easily secured so youre the only one that has access without some hacking. Hacking into wifi is a serious crime in most communities. my two pennies anyways.... if you dont have wifi now call your isp before running out and buying something,, they maybe will sell you something cheap,, or give it to you and then support it too if you need help setting it up.

So like when I go on bit defender when I click to download it do I right click and save as on the computer then right click on the saved program and click burn to disk or am I doing it totally wrong because when I opened the cd on my damaged computer and clicked to run program it the error message said I needed to access the Internet which my computer won't do it's like the Internet and the sound were erased out theres just a red x on both also someone said I may need to reinstall vista which is hard to find I found a couple of free trails of windows 7 until I can buy it but I am having the same problem as bit defender maybe I am doing it wrong

Always nice to have conversation! I'd like to change one comment I made. I suspect smartphone email use is very high. How high, I don't know, but almost every public and private system of any size accommodates their use with special access and apps. Google's Mail Fetcher will combine up to 5 different email accounts into one, so that you can access them all in one place. When you do "reply", you can change the return address so it looks to have come from the other "remote" account. I suspect you could do more than 5 by cascading the accounts, but no one should need more than a few email accounts. If that's wrong, let me know! grandms, my comments had nothing to do with work vs private use. Awkward is awkward, easy is easy. Make yourself happy with however you want to go about your mail tasks. I was just trying to offer a suggestion to people having questions or trouble trying to do something that they may not have known was unnecessary DA, if your governmental agency didn't want web access used, they could turn it off. I suspect the reason is an attempt to decrease the load on their system by offloading some of the work to the client software. Mudlady, keep up the good attitude. Be open to new ways, that's what technological advances are all about. Without those advances, you'd still be struggling away with that Zenith and getting by without all the great functionality today's online world offers. Those changes seem to have been ok with you, you may be more open to change than you think.