>>>> "Well I will offer my weak ideas. I never worry about what a virus or Trojan is..." Me neither..... But then I run only Debian or a Slackware based Linux distributions on PCs here since early 2003....I do run an outgoing firewall though, though not much more than that "security"-wise, and I never ever run as "root". I have been online full time 24/7 for as long as 8 months non-stop running as many as 19 programs and 4 or 5 browsers with 20-something windows & 123 tabs open simultaneously----and other than the very occasional browser hang-up....never an issue, and not a reboot or a defrag or a registry anything, ever..... The link may be of some interest to you, or not. It is one of the preferred by noobies distributions, and it offers more to learn/do than any of the MSFT high dollar-ties you into MSFT formats forever-operating system. Though I have given out a few copies of VectorLinux ( http://www.vectorlinux.com/ ) or my personal fave SimplyMepis ( http://www.mepis.org/ ) or my other personal fave...Knoppix!!! ( http://www.knoppix.com/ )... Knoppix, never ever leave home w/o it...I take a Knoppix CD everywhere with me, there's one in the glove-box right now even...... But what the heck, eh? The most modern, safe, and secure, and very definately superior and it's, lemme see, oh yeah....free A much better deal much more secure than any MSFT OS and software that you can buy, which BTW you can not under any circumstances even put an MSFT OS you BOUGHT & PAID FOR on any except the >>>one PC What the heck... it's free, it's easy.... and it's damn sure secure......If it's good enough for the National Security Agency to base its own systems and software on, you reckon maybe it's good enough for you too? Oh yeah.... and the SecurityEnhancedLinux packages are so secure that the NSA has released, and released for free too, all the SEL code and software into the public domain, and released it all free of charge too...something that all yer friends in Redmond were hoping would have never happened.... Hope you found this somewhat useful..... Oh yeah, and if you like a particular distribution, you can even make 1,000,000 copies and give them all away, should that be your desire. More and more distro's are even including software so that you can "customize" a distro to your liking and then make a million copies of your newly modified OS, and give away the resulting OS/software package, with your name on it even if that's what you want to do with it........You should give Redmond a call and ask about doing that with an MSFT issued OS... And now, it's off to the woods with Sasha and Duke....the big dogs!!! HAGD!!! Here is a link that might be useful: A more secure solution...

are you positive it is the microsoft shield? because the dreaded infection of antivirus xp fakes the MS shield and does appear down there telling you your antivirus is out of date. If you do not have malwarebytes go get it and update it and run full scan and lets see what we find. Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware please download Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware to your desktop. * Double-click mbam-setup.exe and follow the prompts to install the program. * At the end, be sure a checkmark is placed next to Update Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and Launch Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware, then click Finish. * If an update is found, it will download and install the latest version. * Once the program has loaded, select Perform full scan, then click Scan. * When the scan is complete, click OK, then Show Results to view the results. * Be sure that everything is checked, and click Remove Selected. * When completed, a log will open in Notepad. Please save it to a convenient location. The log can also be found here: C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Malwarebytes\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware\Logs\log-date.txt * Please post contents of that file in your next reply.

I was sure keeping my fingers crossed when I unchecked the out going mail in the Mail Shield of Avast but it didn't seem to correct the problem. I appreciate you trying to help Zep. Outlook Express is selected esteban. But thank you for you suggestion. My DH has his own computer so I "send" to his as a trial after trying different things to fix this problem. Strange thing is, I can usually send one email to him and it will go over like it should. If I try a second one, it will show "sending" until a time out occurs with my server. Showing Error #0x800CCC19. Happens everytime. I've tried extending the time for email to send before timeing out, that doesn't help. My computer wise friend told me that the settings may just need tweaking in the Avast program. I've tweaked all I can find to tweak with no cure as of yet. It's very frustrating. I've used the Avast Free version for a year without any trouble, then I pay for the Avast Internet Security and I can't successfully send out emails now. ack! I'm considering uninstalling the Avast Internet Security AV program and just downloading the Free version and I guess I'll just be out the money I've paid for the upgrade. I don't know where else to turn.

Thank you, Kudzu9. I knew I could disable across the board, but I'm glad to hear it's safe to just put in the exclusions for the sites I'm using that are getting blocked. Still curious why Avast web shield is now going into overdrive (I don't think a setting got changed). At least I can resume my activities and just allow exclusions that I need. Lynn.