This could be long... woke at 330am to flashing lights. Front porch light, fluorescent mini twin tube thing, has decided its disco time. Windows has many programs that run as 'Services' in the background. They all have Start/Stop buttons on them but pressing that Stop or Start, might make an UtOh. Some will start at boot others start only when something manually triggers it. Some of the Services are important things windows can't live without. One way to access 'Services' is the 'Computer Management' window. You should look around in there, & Manage things. Interesting place. Its Event Viewer will solve all your window problem... heh/ at least tell you the UtOh's. -- Disk Management is there, it'll help you defrag or change a drive letter. -- Device Manager is there too, look and fix hardware problems or update a driver. Computer Management window, I look in its event viewer often when problems arise, always in hope the link there that will take me directly to windows support will have the magical fix. Sometimes it does, sometimes not. ~ Yes I have installed and have used AdAware2007. Used AdAwareSE for many years and when the newer 2007 version came out I immediately started using it. I have never thought of 2007 version as much different from AdAwareSE. Just a newer version - To me its the same old thing, only it does start as a service -- and, for the Free version there's really no reason for that service to always be running in the background as the free AdAware doesn't do full time spyware protection like the paid version does. Might as well set that Service to Manual so it doesn't start up except on demand. Saves a small amount of memory by not running. If I remember right, frp, back in the day.... I dunno, a yr ago? .. AdAware said uninstall SE completely before installing 2007. Uninstall is a simple no brainer from the Add/Remove in control panel. No special considerations needed. Install of AdAware2007 is about as complicated as making sure you get the Free Version otherwise its a no brainer too. Sounds like you have been happy with SE... If I were you I'd just unistall SE (if its the Free version), and install the Free verion AdAware 2007. Leave the service running always in the background ? really doesn't use a lot of RAM/memory, but it uses some so its a coin toss whether change the service to manual or not. If you dont have another program doing full time spyware protection, you should consider finding one. My choice is Windows Defender, its free and simple. , please

Sapphires you might consider changing from Zonealarm in the near future because it no longer supports your Windows 98. This does not have the same urgency as changing your anti virus but should be done at some point. Comodo, linked below, is very similar to Zonealarm in that it pops up near the clock when looking for permission or denial. There are other free firewalls just as good of course. I use this on my main computer along with their anti virus. A word of caution though if you use the Comodo anti virus, for some reason Windows XP refuses to recognise it and tells me I am exposed. I am not, it is working just great. Here is a link that might be useful: Comodo firewall

Abreeze the best test is the one you have been doing since you installed Zonealarm. If you have had no known issues why would you change because of a test carried out by others? I read somewhere that those tests were on specific points. I have no idea where I read it nor did I search for more data. Zonealarm is possibly the most popular firewall out there. I used it for many years but had to swap because of a conflict I could not fix or I would still be with Zonealarm. Having said that, if you feel like a change then give Comodo a try, it is a good program. You will find that when a big Microsoft update occurs Comodo will ask you to validate each action that had been granted at some point in time. Not a big aggravation, especially if you look at it as a positive to help keep your machine clean

I really prefer Opera - it's the best browser I've ever used. Far more trouble free, far more features, far more customizable You didn't say what you're using but I'm going to guess that you're using Internet Explorer. (sigh) Oh well, your risk. But first, be sure you have a good firewall installed. I like Comodo. Next, install and update about monthly SpywareBlaster. Check for Windows Updates weekly (they usually come out on Tuesday). Requiring you to log in each time suggests an issue with the cookies on your system. Go into the cookie settings an make sure they're being allowed. Especially with using IE, it's important to have a good antivirus running all the time. I like AVG free version. And you should use a malware checker regularly. I like Iobit's Advanced SystemCare since it covers a lot of bases but you should also have a secondary checker too. I like Spybot Search & Destroy and A-squared. Hopefully you got all these programs installed and set up before even going online. If not, do it immediately and run the scans immediately. For the sizing issue, it's an age-old quirk in IE, assuming that's the browser you're using. It sometimes clears itself after a couple days. You can click the maximize button (the middle one in the upper right corder), the click File, Close. If the menu bar doesn't show, press the Alt key to view it, and you can use Alt+F to get the menu. Most of the time you can use the maximize key but sometimes you can only manually drag it out and then use the File Close and live with it that way until it straightens itself out, but most of the time the max button works. It's amazing they haven't done anything about this glitch, er "Feature" since it's been causing people problems for a decade. But Microshaft knows best. At least they think so.