Journal Anon-Admin's Journal: How to Protect a Windows laptop? 1
After more than 10 years with out a Windows system I broke down and bought a Windows XP laptop. I write articles for a few magazines and, for years, I have used IBM ViaVoice on Linux to dictate the articles directly. On the last upgrade of my Linux system, I lost ViaVoice and can no longer find it or buy it for Linux.
So to solve the problem, I bought a simple Compaq Laptop and Dragon Natural Speaking. I was amazed at the crap they installed. 2 hours after turning it on I had successfully removed over 20 gigs of junk/trial/nagware software.
I installed Spybot S&D and found that the laptop came preinstalled with 12 different spyware programs. I followed this by installing CLAMAV and found that it also came preinstalled with a Trojan, although there is a possibility that this was picked up when I put it on the network to grab the software.
So now that the laptop is clean, my question is simple. What should a new Windows system have on it to stop all the junk? What software do you suggest I install to protect this laptop or to extend usability of the unit?
Start over (Score:2)
New PCs come with so much spyware, adware, nagware, and other crap on them nowadays that they are almost unusable out of the box. Even if Spybot and ClamAV think they have found and eliminated all traces of spyware and trojans from your systems, they probably haven't. You will probably find more spyware appearing and getting installed from an unknown source, and it will b