When was the last time you scanned for viruses? Do yourself
a favour and order the SP4 CD. What are your permissions
when you are downloading SP4? Too many people use the
Admin account which means that if a hacker gets in (and may
do so while you are downloading) the hacker assumes your
Admin permissions and can do untold damage to your system.

If this applies to you i.e. using Admin online, make yourself a
PowerUser and apply permisions for this user of only "Read
& Execute", "List Folder Contents" and "Read" on 'Program
Files'. You can of course increase your permisions on your
non-system data files. Just use Admin offline for ..Admin <g>

It's also a good idea to make yourself another Admin account,
just in case the other goes bad.

Besides scanning for viruses (I would suggest
http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_avg_index.php AVG Professional
Single Edition - with a licence) you also need a firewall (suggest
http://download.kerio.com/dwn/kpf/kerio-pf-2.1.5-en-win.exe
- it's free and imo better than the later version 4) which you'll
have to configure. I'll offer to help.

Using these 2 pieces of software, I'm running Win2K Pro SP4
with no microsoft so-called 'security' or 'critical' updates, at all!
(Several of these 'updates' suggest an alternative is a firewall)

One of the nice side effects of running a lower permission
PowerUser online is that I never have to clean out my Temporary
Internet Files, folders - as nothing ever gets written in them!

Alan

alananne {at} surfbest {dot} net
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