unfortunately it is not the first time zonealarm has chosen some really bad marketing methods, they did one of these type some time back and of course the adding of the toolbars in the free version has had it put in the Hall of Shame for a while now. It is still a very good firewall and free is nice but I am sure many will leave them due to their methods. As to other free firewalls Online Armor and Outpost are good options. here is a list from Gizmo's Best Free Firewall I will add this, I and several others in the security community no longer recommend Comodo due to some of their business practices, so consider that before choosing it and you can of course do some research on that to find out more info. Corrine had several good write up's on her blog.

I would really consider un-installing Limewire p2p file share is a problem a lot of infections come from here. damccoy is right your best Virus protection is between your ears. SuperAntispyware is more of an on demand scanner when you think you need to run do so by redownloading it and updating it.. Here is what is recommend by the folks that work with stuff. 1. antivirus Avg or Avast these can be you choice, Norton/Macfee frowned upon although these programs work well for some but you have to pay and they don't offer any more protection, the word is if you have strange problems on a pc that can not be explained un-install these products. 2. A software firewall and a hardware firewall like a router is great. Zone Alarm is free and is most recommend 3.Spywareblaster. 4.spywareguard 5. Spybotsearch&destroy, This tool can be used as an on demand scanner and should be run once a week, by using the Teatimer function you can set spybot to run at startup. 6. ccleaner install and use it once a week cleans temp files history. 7. This comes from the professionals and is a suprise to many Do not run registry cleaners on xp including the one built into ccleaner called the Issues button. Windows xp/2000 is not performance degraded by a clogged registry like 98, 95 were. Better to leave the registry alone. Now to get some of these programs go to the link above (help2go) enter the spyware forum no need to sign up, now look for any post by Steamwiz in his signature you will see a link "Ways to keep your computer safe" click it--Steamwiz is Microsoft certified security spyware remover and well known in the Malware removal community.

oldhousegal, I commend you. I'd love to be living that way - as they say "every journey begins with a single step". I found a website created by a grad student from Singapore who is studying "food perceptions" of all things. This entire website is dedicated to unraveling the "great pine nut mystery" (don't you love the internet!). Here is a picture of pine nuts. "S" is apparently what you want. "A" is what you don't want. Similar in size.. posting another pic below which is a close up of "A". close up on PNS (pine nut syndrome) inducing pine nut Funny... Target house brand of pine nuts has only had one reported case of PNS but Trader Joe's has had 69 cases.... maybe I'm not ready to give up on Target yet (maybe I am still being naive to believe everything I read on the internet.... looks pretty credible to me though - will link the website below). Here is a link that might be useful: The Great Pine Nut Mystery

Funny-I was just noticing that these blasted things weren't popping up today! Good news. Incidentally, I mentioned having the issue here at work running Chrome, and not having the issue at home on my Mac. Thing is, I run Chrome at home too. I can't control what does or does not get installed here at work-part of a large network with IT people, etc. So the fact GW is dealing with it is best case for me. +oM